Treat Hyperthyroidism in Cats

"Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan and I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic and I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk to you about cat first aid and administration of medications. The third older kitty disease and this one really occurs in even older cats, it is called hyperthyroidism and what that means is they have a very overactive thyroid. It is usually a tumor although it is a benign tumor, it does not do anything other than crank out too much thyroid hormone. It is treatable and it usually happens in cats over eight years of age. There are ways to treat it medically. We used to treat it surgically, that is a kind of fallen out of vogue. Now there is a radioactive iodine treatment that can be done that destroys the tumor and that is a one time treatment. That costs about $900 but in the end, it is pretty worth it, because it fixes them and they become normal cats again. But one way to treat it is to use a product called Methimazole or Tapazole, which comes in pills and so you can use any of the pill types, the pill pockets or the pill popper or your fingers, but there is also another way to give medication to cats and that is what the transdermal product and transdermal products are made by some veterinary pharmacies. There is one locally and there are many across the United States and they basically put the medicine into a syringe and you wear a little finger to protect yourself and you basically put in a place where there is no hair and obviously on this cat it is going to be the earlobe, because she has hair everywhere else and so you just rub the dose on her ear like that and it will go through the skin and into her bloodstream and that is one medical way to treat hyperthyroidism."