The Pathology of Treatment Failure

Abstract

It is implied in the title of this paper that death of a feedlot steer or heifer from pneumonia, despite therapy, is to be viewed as a failure of treatment. While it is true that a dead animal can hardly be touted as a resounding success, it is perhaps equally unreasonable to view fatal termination of an overwhelming bacterial infection as our failure. It is at least equally reasonable to ascribe the death of the animal to hopelessly severe initial disease, to preexistant, concurrent or superimposed complicating diseases, or to mistaken diagnosis and thus inappropriate therapy. In this paper I will review some of the published information relevant to so-called treatment failure, and add to it some of my own opinions based upon postmortem examination of feedlot cattle.