Leigh Lamont knocks out animals for a living.

But, says the Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology in the Department of Companion Animals at AVC, “As I got into clinical practice I realized there were a lot of questions about how we manage cases, and how we handle the health of our patients, which we just didn’t have good answers to. Many interventions or treatments were done because we had a sense that something could or should work, rather than being based on sound science. Veterinary medicine has suffered for many years from a lack of appreciation of the importance of evidence-based medicine. That became of interest to me.”

With a specific research interest in anaesthesia and pain management, Lamont undertakes smaller, finite projects. “The field of pain management is relatively new to veterinary medicine,” says Lamont, and
veterinarians and pet-owners are increasingly focused on providing a better standard of care when it comes to preventing and managing pain. “Recently I’ve been looking at a drug called medetomidine. It’s already approved for use in dogs as a single injection, but I’m sorting through the data to see if using it in a new way, over a long period of time as an infusion to decrease anxiety and pain, is safe and effective. Work needs to be done before private practitioners embrace the
technique. Anecdotal evidence is not enough.

“First and foremost, I see myself as a clinical veterinarian, so my research is based on helping companion animals. I tend to work on my species of interest—mostly dogs, occasionally cats, and sometimes horses. But the prime focus is always to improve the health and welfare of those particular species directly.”

Again using medetomidine, she has also looked at its effects on cats with a specific type of heart disease—hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
—that makes them a challenge to anaesthetize safely. “We used ultrasound to image their hearts and document the disease, to show exactly what stage they were at. We then looked at the effects the drug had on their cardiac output and other elements of their heart disease in an acute period and repeated the ultrasound.  We were able to show that the drug had exactly the effects we had anticipated. It’s turned out to be one of those studies that is still referred to on a
regular basis and has probably had an impact on the way that many vets manage sedation and anaesthesia in these patients.

“In another study we looked at the drug’s effects on peripheral nerve blockade in dogs to see if we could improve the quality of the block from a conventional agent by adding medetomidine to it.”

She’s also measured brain wave activity of animal patients under
inhalant anaesthesia, using a device developed for use in human patients to try and quantify the depth of anaesthesia.

“There are so many projects out there, so many possibilities that one can pursue, I never get a sense that all of the good clinical projects are taken. There’s not a week goes by when I’m managing cases with my students that I don’t think, “that would make a great little project.” But, Lamont adds, “I have to try to fit my research in as time permits. It’s not that I lack ideas; I lack time.

“I think for a lot of veterinary students, they hear the word ‘research’ and they go: ‘that’s not for me’, but I think that’s a big mistake. As clinical veterinarians we should really encourage our students to embrace research that can benefit their patients. They see it all the time when they go through the clinics, asking, ‘Is this treatment better than that treatment?’ And they hear, ‘Well, we think it is but the evidence is a little thin.’ So students are confronted with those issues all the time.”

Lamont is also known for keeping things current in the classroom, so much so that she was a recipient of Pfizer’s 2007 Grant for Innovation in Teaching Methodology for her interest in developing new techniques for teaching and assessing clinical competencies as they relate to anaesthesia. “I’m using software to create teaching tools, to generate computer-based scenarios to help my anaesthesia students develop their problem-solving and clinical-reasoning skills before they get into their final clinical year.”

She’s also won an AVC clinical teaching award from senior veterinary students and, last year, a Hessian Merit Award for Excellence in Teaching.

“I knew from an early age growing up in Stratford, Ontario, that this was what I wanted to be. Pets were always an important part of our lives, and our parents encouraged us to explore the world around us, so we also had an appreciation for nature and animals in their natural environments. And I was lucky enough to be able to work with our local veterinarian during high school.

“But once I got into the program at Guelph I realized that I didn’t really have a great understanding of all the opportunities that were out there for veterinarians. I was pretty limited in my focus on private
practice, but then I got to see other opportunities and start to think about what was possible from a clinical and, potentially, research standpoint. After graduating from vet school I did an internship in small animal medicine and surgery here at AVC and developed my interest in anaesthesia and pain management.  After that, I decided to do additional training in clinical anaesthesia and research at the University of Illinois.

“You have to have a bit of an inquisitive nature to be a veterinarian and you always want to know if there’s something we could be doing to improve things. I think it serves me well in my teaching, my clinical work, and in my research.”