Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

Perineal Urethrostomy: description and costs

Recently, I posted a story on Tallulah, the grey tabby male cat who had a urinary blockage. In the story, Marcy J (Tallulah’s owner) mentions a perineal urethrostomy (aka a "PU"), a surgical procedure that all too many pet parents of male cats have heard of.

What is a Perineal Urethrostomy and When are they Performed?

A perineal urethrostomy is a surgical procedure that widens the opening of the urethra (the tube that carries urine from the bladder to outside of the body) and it is performed on both cats and dogs.

In male cats, the urethral canal becomes narrow and can be prone to blockages from mucous plugs, stones or sediment in the urine. Your veterinarian may recommend the surgery if your cat becomes frequently blocked, which is a very dangerous situation and deadly if left untreated, or if the blockage has caused a lot of trauma to the urethra, which sounds like happened to poor Tallulah.

In male dogs, the urethra may become blocked with stones or has received trauma (such as being hit by a car).

Perineal Urethrostomy Surgery

(this might make you feel all ouchy - you are warned!)

The surgery involves separating the urethra from the surrounding tissues and then cutting it open and attaching it to the perineal skin (the perineum is the space between the anus and the urinary tract opening). This positioning allows for a wider urethral opening that is more like that of female anatomy, which has a wider urethral canal than in males.

After surgery, your pet will need to stay in the hospital a couple of days for healing. Once at home, cats will need a shredded paper or pellet litter until the surgery site is fully healed and to wear an Elizabethan collar (more lovingly known as a lampshade) to prevent your cat from licking the wound and disturbing its healing. Your veterinarian also may send your cat home on a pain management and possibly antibiotics.

Potential complications for this procedure are anesthetic risk (as with all surgeries), stricture (scarring that creates a new blockage), and frequent bladder infections.

How Much Does a Perineal Urethrostomy Cost?

(this too might make you feel ouchy)

It can be a very costly procedure. Marcy mentions that the total for everything was $6,000, with $2,900 spent on the emergency care, leaving a total of $3,100 for the cost of the surgery and hospitalization. Marcy did bemoan the fact that she did not have pet insurance to help cover these costs, as you can imagine.

Perineal Urethrostomy Trends

(the good news)

The most frequent cause of perineal urethrostomies is blockages in male cats. The good news is that even though this condition is still relatively common, studies in the United States and Canada show a decline in the number of perineal urethrostomy’s performed and a decrease in the number of blocked cats seen. The decrease coincides with the increased use of feline diets that are low in magnesium so take note: diet is very important in preventing blockages, particularly in male cats.

Thank you to the follow sources for help with this summary: The Veterinary Information Network, Inc.; ThePetCenter.com; the American Veterinary Medical Association; and Wipikedia.

Related Posts:
Pet health story: Tallulah, a grey tabby cat
Perineal Urethrostomy: description and costs
Perineal Urethrostomy, incontinence and bladder atony
Ask Laura: what are the chances of success for Perineal Urethrostomy surgery?

Embrace Pet Insurance waiting period

What is a waiting period?

It is a period of time where the certificate’s Coverage is restricted. For Embrace policies, it is 48 hours for injuries and 14 days for illnesses.

What does this mean?

Conditions that occur during the waiting period may be excluded from your coverage as a pre-existing condition. That's to protect against a pet parent seeing illness symptoms in his dog or cat, signing up for pet insurance, and then going to the vet and claiming right away. As I've said before, pet insurance is for unexpected illnesses and injuries, and preventing these claims for known conditions keeps the premiums down for everyone.

The good news is that you don't have to go through the waiting period all over again when your policy renews as the waiting period is waived for policy and endorsement renewals.

Genetic conditions and pre-existing conditions - how do they work together?

Let's start off with a couple of definitions:

A Genetic or Congenital Condition is an illness whose presence is determined solely by hereditary factors, which may or may not be present on the policy effective date.

A Pre-existing or Foreseeable Condition is an illness or injury that first occurred or showed clinical signs before the effective date or within the policy waiting period.

Like most insurance, we insure unexpected events only, so pre-existing conditions are not covered in our policies. For example, you don't expect to be able to buy car insurance for an accident you just had (although you might wish you could!) 

So, one of the questions we have had about Embrace's pet insurance products is: how does excluding pre-existing conditions mesh with the fact that we cover genetic or congenital conditions?

It's a good question since you might think that a genetic condition is already pre-existing.

Well, in fact, a breed can have a genetic predisposition for a particular illness, like hip dysplasia, but a particular dog may never actually get the condition. It's a bit like if your mom and your grandmother had breast cancer, your chances of getting breast cancer are higher than a woman with no breast cancer in her medical history. The chances are higher but you are not guaranteed to get breast cancer.

So, you can be part of a group (breed) that is prone to genetic conditions but not actually ever get the condition. Make sense?

Embrace only excludes genetic conditions if you already know your pet has the condition, otherwise, it's covered if it appears after your waiting period.

Related articles: Embrace Pet Insurance covers genetic and congenital conditions for cats and dogs

Unusual fact about Swedish dogs

Only 10% of Swedish dogs are spayed or neutered, compared to the US where it is the norm to get your cat or dog "fixed" (to be honest, I don't know what the stats are for the US, but my gut tells me it is well over 50% - does anyone else have a more accurate number than my gut?).

Up until 15 years ago, it was illegal to spay or neuter your dog in Sweden (I'm not sure about cats - probably the same I would think) and so the mental barrier of performing the procedure still lingers.

In addition, 82% of all dogs are purebred and 72% are registered with the Swedish kennel club.

Facts courtesy of Agria International, Sweden's largest pet insurer.

Related articles: 2002 Pet Insurance Market in Sweden is 29%, Where was the first pet insured?

Does Embrace Pet Insurance offer any discounts?

Yes we do!

• If your pet is micro-chipped, you get a 5% discount,
• If you have a service animal, you get a 10% discount
• If you have more than one pet, you get a 5% discount on the total premiums,
• If you are a vet clinic employee, you get a 5% discount.

The maximum of the above discounts in total is 10%.

We also offer an additional 5% discount if your employer offers an Embrace Pet Insurance benefit program and if you pay your year's premium up front, you get an additional 5% discount.

Wow, that's a lot of discounts, don't you think? That should make you as happy as these smiling cats :)

What is a Service Animal?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a service animal as any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to provide assistance to an individual with a disability.

If they meet this definition, animals are considered service animals under the ADA regardless of whether they have been licensed or certified by a state or local government.

Hats off to all our hard-working service dogs and cats! Embrace Pet Insurance gives a 10% discount on our premiums for all service dogs and cats.

Video of Punch and Sparkle, the Embrace office hamsters

We don't just embrace cats and dogs around here. The office hamsters have been mentioned in this blog before, but we finally got around to getting some real footage for all of our readers who've been so patiently waiting for the hamster cam.

Punch is a Black Eyed Argente Campbells Russian Dwarf:

His brother Sparkle is an Opal Pearl Campbells Russian Dwarf:

Yes, they are very cute.  The brothers were adopted from a litter of 9 from the Cleveland Animal Protective League in spring of 2005.

Thanks to Hamsterific for the info on hamster markings and thanks to Lea for putting together the video and letting us adopt her hamsters :). 

Kind words from a friend

Andrea Learned is always has something valuable to add on any topic, but in particular on marketing to women, and she has a great book that she co-wrote called Don't Think Pink. So, I was so pleased to see that she wrote up an article on pet insurance and had lots of kind words to say about Embrace.

Embrace Pet Insurance is one such company that I've been watching, mainly because of the personal friendship I've built with one of its co-founders, Laura Bennett.  She knew, early on, that women were the key to the business and so, even as the underwriting process has taken way longer than she and co-founder Alex Kooglick might have hoped - they have finally launched their company.  Interestingly, I remember way back when being part of their survey on possible logos, and then later a survey of web site templates. They have been so-wisely building community and involving their likely customers for years in advance of this launch.

Check out A Women's Market Insight: Pet Insurance at Andrea's blog, Learned on Women.

Thanks Andrea. Big hugs to you and Hilde.

Question: Will Embrace rates go up when the cat or dog reach a certain age?

Our policy premiums go up every year based on the increase health risks as your cat or dog ages and veterinary inflation. But because our policy is customizable, this gives you the flexibility of balancing your benefits, by letting you change them if you wish, with your premiums in a way that fits your needs and budget.

Other pet insurers use different techniques to keep the premiums down at older ages but they generally involve reducing coverage along the way. For example:

• One pet insurer has low lifetime limits on coverage per category of coverage (like skin ailments, eye conditions, etc.) and increases your premium if you claim on your policy. We have no per incident limits or lifetime limits and we don't increase your premiums because you made a claim.
• Another does not cover chronic conditions after the first year they occur. If you take the Embrace Continuing Care endorsement, you are covered for ongoing treatment for chronic illnesses that occur during the life of your policy.
• Yet another company automatically reduces your benefits as your cat ages; we let you decide if and how you would reduce benefits to suit your needs to keep the costs down.
• One pet insurer guarantees your premiums to a certain age for an extra fee but doesn’t guarantee your benefits, leaving the door open for them to decrease them at a future date. This company's premiums increase at age 8 as well.

As you can see, each company has some mechanism to deal with the higher costs at older ages. We just feel that it should be up to you to choose how to manage your pets healthcare costs in the future, not your pet insurer.