ALL YOU WANT TO KNOW

Treating Abscesses in Reptiles

(Melissa Kaplan)

This is not a do-it-yourself manual on how to treat abscesses. It does discuss what needs to be done, and I do relate it from a personal perspective. But don't mess around with treating abscesses on your own until you have been shown how by a veterinarian or trained wildlife rehabilitator. You are cutting into a living animal, through skin and fat layers, through ennervated and vascularized muscle tissue. You risk cutting tendons or joints and may cause worse problems than you started with. The treatment of abscesses is a surgical procedure and, like most surgical procedures, is best left to those who are trained in them, who can do them in a sterile field using sterile instruments and proper irrigation solutions, packing, wound dressing, and antibiotics - and anesthetics. Ask your vet if you may watch. Ask your vet to teach you how to do minor follow-up treatment at home. The more you learn the more you will be able to do...and the more you will realize how important it is th at the procedures be done correctly. If you don't know of a reptile vet in your area, email me at melissk@sonic.net and let me know where you live.

Abscesses are interesting things... They do not necessarily occur at the site of an injury, and often do not occur in any proximity (time-wise) to an injury.

What happens in a healthy animal is that the bacteria that gets into a wound (it could be a minor scratch or puncture wound, from claws, for example) is subdued by the fully functioning immune system. However, if the immune system becomes stressed for some reason down the line, it may no longer be able to suppress the bacteria from rapid reproduction and the iguana gets an infection. Abscesses are localized infections that generally occur in conjunction with systemic infections.

Stresses can include emotional stress such as being moved to a new enclosure, having the entire enclosure moved, changing owners, too cold, poor diet, breeding season, etc.

Abscesses that occur in fleshy tissue can be lanced (I use a scalpel blade) and cleaned out (I use dilute Nolvasan, dental or bone curettes, and cotton tipped swabs). Even if you get all the caseous pus-y matter out, and keep flushing the cavity with Nolvasan or Betadine, it can build up again within a day or so, so two or more treatments may be necessary. As abscesses are likely the result of systemic infections, treatment must include antibiotic therapy. Failure to start antibiotic treatment may result in a worse infection if the site is not cleaned out thoroughly. Even when on antibiotics, particularly resistant infections may cause repeat abscesses to grow until antibiotics dosed for resistant infections are used or the caseous material is cultured to determine the best antibiotic to use.

Abscesses in boney areas (such as jaw, eye area or joints) may cause further problems, especially if left untreated for some time. Not only can they affect the mobility of the joint and adversely impact the animal's use of that limb, it can eat away at bone and cartilage; this can get very expensive surgically and radiographically... So best to treat them as soon as possible, again, with antibiotics and aspiration (if loose pus or fluid) or lancing and excision (if the usual reptile caseous abscess material).

Antibiotics generally given are Baytril, Pipercillin, Amikacin. Amikacin is nephrotoxic and must be administered with supplemental fluids. The Pip can cause tissue necrosis around the injection site and so should be diluted with saline or Ringers. Baytril can sting going in and if administered subcutaneously ("sub-q" or "SQ"), it too can cause painful tissue necrosis (necrosis=death). Baytril injectible can be administered by mouth and it can also be obtained in tablet form.

NOTE: In animals prone to lungworm infestation (primarily fish eaters), as well as some other species, abscesses may in fact be larvae or adult worms trying to migrate out. The way they spread is to cause a subdermal irritation which generally causes the host animal to scratch at it or rub it against something, causing the "abscess" to break open, thus freeing the parasite who then looks for another host in which to complete it's life cycle.

When working on abscesses, wear disposable surgical gloves, have your Betadine or Nolvasan open, your gauze sponges, sterile swabs and blades at hand, as well as bandaging materials and topical antibiotic (triple antibiotic ointment, Silvadene, etc.). It is best to work with someone else who can keep the animal wrapped and restrained.

Melissa Kaplan 11/95 melissk@sonic.net

Collected for you for the site "ALL YOU WANT TO KNOW" by JOS GEURTS.

Return to Homepage

Return to indexpage

Top of page

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page