TFM_Juan Llivi

SUMMARY
In the first weeks of life, many piglets experience neonatal diarrhea and it is a continuous
challenge to diagnose the specific cause. The main problem for failure in the definitive diagnosis
is the limited absence of pathognomonic lesions and also an error in isolation and identification of
some infectious or non-infectious agents. The objective of this study is to define the diagnostic
approach to diarrheal processes in these species and to evaluate the usefulness of a combined
use of multiple diagnostic tools to establish a correct etiological diagnosis. A search of the annual
reports of enteritis diagnoses, evaluated by histopathology (H) to compare with the results
obtained by bacteriology (B) and molecular biology (PCR), was made. Seventy-seven cases of
enteritis in piglets were analyzed by using the Kappa Coefficient with a confidence interval of 95%,
the degree of agreement between the tests was evaluated. A concordance between H / B of k =
0.116 and k = 0.258 was obtained for E. coli and C. perfringens, and the agreement between H /
PCR was k = 0.712 and k = 0.837 for swine rotavirus and coronavirus. The lesions frequency
analyzed by histopathology was 45.9% catarrhal enteritis, 33.3% necrotic hemorrhagic enteritis
and 48.2% catarrhal enteritis with atrophy of the villi. The prevalence of enteric pathogens was E.
coli 33.1%, C. perfringens 14.4%, E. coli β- hemolytic 9.6%, Rotavirus A 17.4, swine epidemic
diarrhea 4.2% and Rotavirus C 2.4%.The results of this study concluded that there is a
disagreement between diagnostic tests for the identification of colibacillosis, the diagnosis was
probably affected since the diseases associated with colibacillosis do not produce specific lesions
in the mucous membrane that allows their assessing, therefore, the sensitivity seems to be
affected.
Keywords: Diagnosis, Neonatal diarrhea, Kappa index, Histopathology, bacteriology, PCR.