A review of medically unnecessary surgeries in dogs and cats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
JAVMA • Vol 248 • No. 2 • January 15, 2016 In ancient Rome, during the First Century CE, Lucius Columella wrote that it was proper to remove the tails of puppies to prevent their growth to an “abominable length” and to prevent madness, which is presumed to refer to rabies.1 Although the idea that this procedure could protect dogs against rabies has long since been abandoned, tail docking is still commonly performed, both because of a belief that it reduces the incidence of injuries and because of the resulting perceived improvements in aesthetics. However, the effectiveness of this procedure in preventing injuries has been questioned, and the idea of performing this and other surgical procedures on animals solely for cosmetic reasons has been heavily criticized in many parts of the world.2 In fact, some countries have passed legislation restricting these types of surgeries. While anecdotal reports suggest that certain cosmetic procedures such as ear cropping are in decline in North America, to our knowledge there are no reliable estimates on the numbers of these procedures performed annually. Most surgical procedures performed on dogs and cats in North America are performed for therapeutic, diagnostic, or preventive purposes; that is, they are medically necessary. In contrast, procedures that are not necessary for maintaining health or that are not beneficial to the animal can be classified as MUSs. This would include procedures performed mainly to alter the appearance of animals (eg, ear cropping and tail docking in dogs), procedures performed solely to prevent behaviors that are destructive or annoying (eg, devocalization and defanging in dogs and onychectomy in cats), and procedures of dubious or minimal benefit (eg, dewclaw removal in dogs). Note that elective neutering of healthy dogs and cats has historically been performed to prevent or reduce the risk of future health problems (eg, pyometra, mammary gland neoplasia, and reproductive tract–related neoplasia) and to prevent unplanned breeding, which benefits the population as a whole by reducing the number of unwanted animals.3 Thus, for the purposes of the A review of medically unnecessary surgeries in dogs and cats
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".