Feline Triaditis Does It Exist and What Are the Implications in a Cat Diagnosed With Triaditis

Most veterinary practitioners have made a diagnosis of “Triaditis”; many of us on a
fairly regular basis and yet, if you type “Feline Triaditis” into the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI ie Pubmed) search page, there is a paucity of literature documenting the existence of this disease as a distinct clinical entity. So where does the ‘disease’ come from and what does this ‘diagnosis’ actually mean?
Triaditis has been defined as the ‘triad’ of inflammatory GI disease, cholangitis and pancreatitis. Each of these separate components is commonly diagnosed in the cat
and there are a number of studies describing each of these. Indeed post mortem studies describing cholangitis in the cat (or cholangiohepatitis in older papers) have documented concurrent inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in 83%1 and 50%2 of cases, concurrent pancreatitis in 50%1 and 60%2 of cases and both in 39%1 and 32%2
of cases. Another study describing pancreatitis has shown an increased pancreatic
score (a measure of pancreatic inflammation) in cats with GI disease (including liver disease) compared to healthy animals3 and recently, a clinical case series documented concomitant small bowel IBD, cholangitis and pancreatitis in 30% (10/33) cats undergoing exploratory coeliotomy; concomitant small bowel IBD and cholangitis in 30% of cases, and pancreatic and GI inflammation in 12% of cases4. Taken together, there seems little doubt that cats have a tendency to succumb to 2 or more of these disease entities. However, overall only 30-39% of cats being investigated demonstrated Triaditis. […]