The Rise of COX-2 Inhibitors in Veterinary Pain Management
A Historical Perspective

About this book:

For much of the twentieth century, veterinary medicine operated in a dark age of pain management—where animals were believed to feel less than humans, where "nature's splint" justified surgical agony, and where the only drugs available burned holes in stomachs and shut down kidneys. *The Rise of COX-2 Inhibitors in Veterinary Pain Management* tells the gripping story of how a single biochemical discovery—distinguishing COX-1 from COX-2—shattered that paradigm, igniting a revolution that transformed clinics, curricula, and the very definition of animal welfare.

From the laboratory breakthroughs that promised selectivity to the species-specific minefields that turned canine miracles into feline fatalities, this book pulls back the curtain on the high-stakes translation of human pharmacology into veterinary practice. Witness the regulatory gauntlets, the commercial boom that brought carprofen and meloxicam to every exam room, and the post-marketing shockwaves—idiosyncratic liver failure, the Vioxx recall's chilling ripple effect, and the hard-won birth of modern pharmacovigilance. It is a saga of science colliding with biology, commerce, and ethics on the operating table.

Yet the narrative doesn't end at the pill bottle. Follow the revolution into the stall, the aviary, and the zoo; into the perioperative suite where preemptive analgesia rewrote surgical outcomes; and into the consulting room where client education became as vital as the prescription pad. Culminating in the arrival of EP4 antagonists and monoclonal antibodies, this definitive history reveals how a class of drugs did more than relieve suffering—it forced a profession to finally see, measure, and honor the pain it had long ignored.