#alk-p

Elevated liver enzymes - what does it really mean? How worried are we?

It happens quite often that I’ll run a blood panel on a seemingly healthy senior dog, and I discover one or two liver enzymes are elevated. How worried should we be? Well, it depends, but here’s some general patterns.

The usual culprit is an enzyme called Alkaline Phosphatase, or Alk-Phos, or Alk-P. I commonly see this enzyme rise in older dogs that have no symptoms. The other liver enzymes…