Identification of microchip implantation events for dogs and cats in the VetCompass Australia database

Mcgreevy, Paul, Master, Sophie, Richards, Leonie, Soares Magalhaes, Ricardo J., Peaston, Anne, Combs, Martin, Irwin, Peter J., Lloyd, Janice, Croton, Catriona, Wylie, Claire, and Wilson, Bethany (2019) Identification of microchip implantation events for dogs and cats in the VetCompass Australia database. Animals, 9 (7). 423.

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Abstract

In Australia, compulsory microchipping legislation requires that animals are microchipped before sale or prior to 3 months in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, and by 6 months in Western Australia and Tasmania. Describing the implementation of microchipping in animals allows the data guardians to identify individual animals presenting to differing veterinary practices over their lifetimes, and to evaluate compliance with legislation. VetCompass Australia (VCA) collates electronic patient records from primary care veterinary practices into a database for epidemiological studies. VCA is the largest companion animal clinical data repository of its kind in Australia, and is therefore the ideal resource to analyse microchip data as a permanent unique identifier of an animal. The current study examined the free-text ‘examination record’ field in the electronic patient records of 1000 randomly selected dogs and cats in the VCA database. This field may allow identification of the date of microchip implantation, enabling comparison with other date fields in the database, such as date of birth. The study revealed that the median age at implantation for dogs presented as individual patients, rather than among litters, was 74.4 days, significantly lower than for cats (127.0 days, p = 0.003). Further exploration into reasons for later microchipping in cats may be useful in aligning common practice with legislative requirements.

Item ID: 58840
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2076-2615
Keywords: cats; dogs; microchip; strays; VetCompass Australia
Copyright Information: © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Funders: Australian Research Council (ARC), University of Sydney
Date Deposited: 08 Jul 2019 02:58
FoR Codes: 30 AGRICULTURAL, VETERINARY AND FOOD SCIENCES > 3009 Veterinary sciences > 300999 Veterinary sciences not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9299 Other Health > 929999 Health not elsewhere classified @ 30%
97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970107 Expanding Knowledge in the Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences @ 70%
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