Short-acting steroids such as prednisolone or dexamethasone SP can be helpful in stabilizing a patient prior to or at the beginning of treatment for FIP. It is strongly recommended however they should be discontinued once the patient has begun to show improvement -- typically within the first week. Longer-term steroid use is strongly discouraged (unless concretely required) since:

• it can mask the extent of symptom resolution, especially in cats with neurological FIP
• once symptoms begin to resolve it is no longer beneficial
• steroid use may interfere with the development of a protective immune response to the FIP virus

Use of long-acting steroids such as Depo-Medrol is strongly discouraged.

Note that there are indeed cases where steroid use is appropriate later into treatment, for example reducing ICP in cats with severe neurological FIP.

When pleural effusion is present, therapeutic thoracocentesis is necessary and recommended to relieve symptoms if the patient is presenting with dyspnea. No further intervention may be needed as thoracic fluid tends to return more slowly than with abdominal effusions and typically symptoms related to thoracic effusions resolve after 7-10 days. However this is variable and it is recommended that the owner be counseled on monitoring and being prepared to repeat the procedure if necessary.

Therapeutic abnominocentesis is generally not recommended unless the fluid is compressing the chest and interfering with breathing, in which case it is recommended to remove only as much as is needed to relieve symptoms. Typically abdominal effusion tends to return fairly rapidly, limiting the therapeutic usefulness of abnominocentesis. Repeated drainage of abdominal effusions may deplete proteins and cause harmful shifts in fluid and electrolyte balances in severely ill cats.