Q: My dog has itchy skin and I keep using cortisone to treat this. Is this acceptable?
A: No, definitely not. Cortisone is good in that it will stop the itching, often immediately, but as soon as you stop the cortisone, the itching is back. Therefore, you are treating the symptoms and not the cause, while subjecting your pet to the many negative side effects of long-term cortisone use. There is a place for using cortisone in an itching animal, if it is used only two or three times a year, for short courses. The dose must also always be tapered and never stopped suddenly. In this day and age, we have many safer and more advanced ways of treating itchy skin than excessive and continued use of cortisone. If your pet is on long-term cortisone tablets or injections, it should really be a very last resort as an alternative to euthanising the animal.
Consult your vet and ask about the many other more modern, safer options available to treat itching skin that do not result in negative side effects which can become life-threatening to your pet. Also, remember that itching skin is often something that cannot be cured altogether but rather needs to be medically managed on an ongoing basis.
In private veterinary practice we find that when clients are compliant with our instructions on treating itchy skin, it works most of the time. However, the majority of clients we see who have a pet with itchy skin claim to have tried everything, but that nothing except cortisone works. When we question them in more detail about what they have tried, it becomes very obvious that they were not compliant in the use of the alternatives to cortisone. For example, they were given a shampoo to use twice a week but have only used it once in two months. You cannot expect results if you do not follow the instructions correctly. To then use cortisone as an alternative is not fair to your pet.
Dr Le-Anne Kleynhans, veterinarian
