Treatment includes washing the exposed areas to remove the irritant. Patients that are itchy are given steroids for a short period of time. It is important to prevent re-exposure. Treatment includes combinations of dietary supplementation, steroids, and immune modulation drugs. Secondary skin diseases such as hypothyroidism are diagnosed via clinical testing for the underlying disease.
Diagnosis often requires blood tests, biopsies, and X-rays.
Treatment of the underlying condition usually results in improvement of the skin problems. Your pet's skin problems very often combine two or more of the above diseases. For example, flea infestation hypersensitivity can lead to pyoderma. Because of the complicated interactions between the skin and other organs within the body and due to skin's varied response to insult, diagnosis and treatment of skin disease may be difficult and time consuming. The skin scrape is the mainstay of diagnosis.