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How We Support Future Specialists
Dr. Sarah J. Miller
A crucial part of the ACVIM's work - and the Foundation's - is ensuring that residency programs in the internal medicine specialties stay true to the highest standards. An important example: Through the Foundation's active and growing grants program, ACVIM residents-in-training can serve as co-investigators in cutting-edge clinical veterinary studies. Funded by an ACVIM Foundation grant, cardiology resident Dr. Sarah Miller worked with lead investigator Dr. Mark Kittleson and co-investigator Dr. Kristin MacDonald at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
"The ACVIM Foundation grant allowed us to get more dogs for our study - to make the investigation stronger. Dr. Kittleson is on the cutting edge of everything. Working with him was a tremendous opportunity."
Sarah J. Miller
A brief look at the study: Several forms of cardiac disease in dogs are inherited - though some may not become apparent until animals reach adulthood. In boxer dogs, this is true of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy - often referred to as boxer ARVC. The traditional screening technique - a 24-hour electrocardiogram - usually yields a diagnosis only after most affected dogs have been bred and passed on the disease . In this study, Drs. Miller, MacDonald, and Kittleson used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the first time ever in clinically affected dogs as a new diagnostic screening tool. The hope: to identify boxers affected with ARVC earlier in their lives and before they are bred. Longer-range goals include developing a possible genetic test for ARVC, and, of course, eliminating this deadly and devastating disease forever.
Sarah J. Miller DVM, DiplACVIM (Cardiology) earned her DVM from The Ohio State University in 2001, completed a small animal medicine and surgery internship at Angell Memorial Animal Hospital in Boston, and in 2005, Dr. Miller finished a rigorous three-year cardiology residency at the University of California-Davis. Dr. Miller - one of only 120 Board-certified veterinary cardiologists in the world - joined the staff of Advanced Veterinary Care Center in Lawndale, California in the fall 2005.
