UF College of Veterinary Medicine graduate student honored for research

Selena Tinga, D.V.M., a former small animal surgery resident and current Ph.D. student at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine, received the award for best clinical research presentation in the Resident’s Forum at the annual American College of Veterinary Surgeons Surgical Summit meeting, held in October in Indianapolis.

The American College of Veterinary Surgeons Foundation presents the award each year during the meeting to honor outstanding surgical residents-in-training. Tinga’s presentation involved research from her graduate studies focusing on cranial cruciate ligament, or CCL, disease in dogs.

Under the mentorship of UF faculty members Stan Kim, B.V.Sc.; Dan Lewis, D.V.M.; Scott Banks, Ph.D.; and others, Tinga has been researching motion in the knee joint of dogs affected by CCL disease. A common condition affecting dogs, CCL insufficiency results in joint instability and leads to the development of painful osteoarthritis and meniscal damage.

Tinga’s work is aimed at precisely defining the motion in the knee of dogs naturally affected by CCL degeneration as well as the motion in dogs’ knees after two common surgical treatments. Comparisons were made to normal knees in order to define what is occurring in the diseased state and whether knee motion can be normalized with these widespread, commonly used surgical therapies.

“We know the surgeries are pretty good at helping these pups out because they are much more comfortable after surgery, but we also know that any residual abnormal motion probably leads to osteoarthritis years down the road,” Tinga said. “We are striving to give our patients even better outcomes.”

Tinga has presented aspects of her work at the World Veterinary Orthopaedic Congress in Breckenridge, Colorado in 2014 and at the Veterinary Orthopedic Society in Sun Valley, Idaho in 2015, where she received the award for best resident abstract presentation. She also gave the Mark S. Bloomberg Memorial Lecture as an invited speaker at the International Canine Sports Medicine Symposium in 2017 and received the college’s Charles F. Simpson Memorial Scholarship for her research efforts this past summer.

The University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine is supported through funding from UF Health and the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.