Archive for It's About The Horse The Free Forum for those Doing Parelli - and a whole lot More! "Anything forced and misunderstood can never be beautiful." Xenophon (430-355 B.C.),
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bit
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Bone infectionsHaving a heck of a time with Gunner. His bone infection isn't big, and the vet expected him to improve pretty quickly since they dug out the abscess. It's been a week, and he's still pretty ouchy. I'm taking him back to K State tomorrow.
My question; If he's been on the same antibiotics for a long period of time, could he have built up a tolerance, or resistance, so that the infection in his bone is no longer responding?
My gut tells me he needs to get dosed with the good stuff. Any thoughts? The vet wasn't concerned when he saw the exray, but is concerned that he hasn't responded better.
Trying to remain calm. Allowing lots of time for trailer loading tomorrow. Appreciate your suggestions.
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CoolsLadyInRed
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Yes, they can get resistant as people can do. Did it get cultured for specific bacterial growth? In humans the urine or blood or bone gets tested for very specific bacteria. Then the appropriate antibiotic is chosen. But it is best tested before any antibiotics are started. Hoping all goes well for Gunner. Sending a prayer for him. beth
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bit
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Supposedly he was cultured, so I assumed the sulfa tabs were the right antibiotics. He's been on them for two months, some off, mostly on. I'll bring it up tomorrow. I just don't want to see him hurting.
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carefreegirl
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Bit your experience is reminding me a lot of my experience I had with Bently soon after I got him. I had him maybe a month, when He got kicked in his, well you know, the spot no guy wants to get kicked in.
It swelled to the size of a football--called the vet as I discovered it late at night, vet said to cold hose it and bring him in tomorrow, if I thought it could wait, Bently wasn't lame, just huge, so waited till the next morning--took him into the vet, they gave him sedative drugs so they could palpate everything and make sure there were no tears/punctures, also gave him drugs (steroids I think) to make him drop so he could pee, in case he wasn't because of the swelling, and to help with the swelling, gave him pain meds by shot, and told me to give him bute and exercise and cold hose for the next couple of days and watch it as it may abscess.
about two days latter, was at a Pony Club lesson, and after riding around a bit, noticed it was drawing into an abscess head, took him to the vet just before they closed,and they lanced it, and gave me antibiotics and more bute....was on this for two weeks, seemed to be doing well, so vet advised to take of antibiotics and bute completly, a couple of days later, another abscess, repeat process of bute and antibiotics...
Bently was not doing well...was losing weight, and having muscle atrophy in his left hind quarter. took him into vet again, vet did a lot of x-rays, ultrasound, and exploratory stuff trying to figure out what was wrong, referred me to an equine specialist...
trailered 4 hours to specialist, they ultrasound and happened to find a small little blip that looked like it could be an abscess head...at this point Bently had lost about 200 lbs, had no fever, but had a high white blood cell count, in other words his body was losing the battle--though he was still fighting, they went ahead and cut the area, and it was an abcess, a good gallon of green/white goop came pouring out, they flushed it well and cultured it...found the antibiotic I was using should be working, so advised to continue to use that....they flushed the area well, put in a drain, and sent me home...Bently started recovering, gained back about half of his weight, about 2-3 weeks later they told me to take him off the antibiotics and bute, about 2 to 4 days after I did that, he was limping again....it was another abscess.
my home vet decided that we needed to take him in to surgery to put him under anesthesia and open it up and clean out the area very well...restarted antibiotics, but this time they combined two different antibiotics, and was put back on bute, after 2-3 more weeks finally was able to take him off of antibiotics for good...was a good 4 to 5 months of battling abscesses before it was resolved...
I then struggled for about another 2 to 3 years, getting the scar tissue cleared up enough that it didn't bother him when doing things like jumping, he even had trouble going on a circle to the right, as his left hind couldn't take a large enough step...he'd get better for a while, then would seem to get tight and sore again...finally resolved this by doing what another vet advised which was to bute him up a lot and work him hard---lots of riding and jumping, to stretch it out...physical therapy is what he called it, giving him enough 'drugs' that he was willing to work the area, I did that and then gave him three months off right after the 'physical therapy', after that we haven't had any more issues, It has been about two years since the 'physical therapy'
I certainly hope Gunner doesn't have such long lasting effects as Bently has, just keep plugging away and don't be afraid to use other vets to get it resolved.
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imagele
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Re: Bone infections | bit wrote: | Having a heck of a time with Gunner. His bone infection isn't big, and the vet expected him to improve pretty quickly since they dug out the abscess. It's been a week, and he's still pretty ouchy. I'm taking him back to K State tomorrow.
My question; If he's been on the same antibiotics for a long period of time, could he have built up a tolerance, or resistance, so that the infection in his bone is no longer responding?
My gut tells me he needs to get dosed with the good stuff. Any thoughts? The vet wasn't concerned when he saw the exray, but is concerned that he hasn't responded better.
Trying to remain calm. Allowing lots of time for trailer loading tomorrow. Appreciate your suggestions. |
My horse had an infected pedal bone (nail penetration injury) back in 1998. It took 6 months, 2 operations, 4 or 5 different types of anitbiotics, many thousands of dollars and I still nearly lost her. She lost over 1 square inch of pedal bone from that infection. IF she had not been operated on within 5 days of sustaining the injury she would likely have had no pedal bone left within a couple of months given the speed the infection was spreading initially. Her bone - the infected bits of it - was the consistency of icecream during that first operation. even though she had what my Vet said was an absolutely ideal plan if they are going to stand on a nail and have it touch bone (I saw it happen and she was at the Equine Vet hospital within 2 hours, stayed there 17 days while they did the iv needles and her first operation and post operative care) the bone still got reinfected and she had to have a second operation just when I thought it was almost over. We were back to square one 3 months after it all started. It took another three months to get her through it all safely.
Summarising some of what my Vet told me - Bone infections in hooves are serious. If the horses hoof circulation is compromised at all it is very difficult to actually have the antibiotics reach the site of the infection in the bone in their hooves - either oral, im or iv anitbiotics. When my horse got to antibiotic # 4 or 5 with her pedal bone infection (it was the really expensive antibiotic at approx $800/kg and you bought it onbly by the kilo) it was actually an oral antibiotic but the Vet actually syringed some of that antibiotic into the hole in her foot as well for the first week after her second operation. Apparently that was the only antibiotic that killed the bugs she had.
With my horse the foot was not soaked at all, just dressed and bandaged. She had a steel plate over her shoe to help make sure that nothing that was not supposed to be in there got in there. Then she had two bandages over plate. All of them (except the plate) were new each time I changed dressings.
All this was changed daily to start with WITHOUT the foot ever touching the ground while the bandages/plate/dressings were removed and replaced. The only lameness she had during most of the time was because of the of the bolts holding the plate in place made it uneven for her.
My recommendation for where Gunner is now
- Get the foot xrayed again.
Get the ooze coming out of his foot swabbed and tested again.
Use whatever antibiotic it is that will kill those bugs.
Good luck to both of you.
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bit
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spent a long time at K State today. The hole they made for Gunner's abscess to drain had closed. There was more digging, bigger whole, more ultra antibiotics in the wound, soaked in some fizzy stuff, then on with a tight bag, gas came out, it's called clean trac, so the gas pushes the yuk out, bute for three days, one more fizzy soak tomorrow, and then ebsomes salt soaks and another week of antibiotics. sigh. I hope.
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