Allergic reaction to sutures?

Has anybody have any experience with females after spaying?

The rabbit in question:
-Has been spayed 6 weeks ago
-started biting to the left and the right of the cut a few days afterwards and was finally threated with Baytril becuase of the outside infection
-stopped eating on thursday, vet saw coc in drops, but all of us including collegue of vet started doubting that diagnose... no stasis going on, she is still pooping ,but she is in pain...
-6 weeks after the operation, you can still feel the sutures right under her skin... we are wondering if:
1/Can there possibly have been a mistake? Did they use the wrong suture???
2/A allergic reaction to the suture with infection???

Does anybody have any experiences with this? Nobody on our forum does...
She is in no condition to undergo more surgery now...

Nobody at all? :?

Rabbits CAN have an allergic reaction to sutures but it is usually a localised skin reaction which the rabbit will often bite & scratch at...thus aggravating the problem.

If it is infected and uncomfortable then this could be a cause for her reluctance to eat. Did she have a dental check under GA?

Do you mean that you vet found traces of Coccidia in your rabbits stools?

I have a feeling that allergic reactions and post-op adhesions are more common if cat gut sutures are used.

Sooz said:

Rabbits CAN have an allergic reaction to sutures but it is usually a localised skin reaction which the rabbit will often bite & scratch at...thus aggravating the problem.

If it is infected and uncomfortable then this could be a cause for her reluctance to eat. Did she have a dental check under GA?

Do you mean that you vet found traces of Coccidia in your rabbits stools?

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Yes...BUT...it ressembles bacteries wich are always present in rabbits... and since both rabbits have been trheated against coc about 3 months ago AND there was the spaying 6 weeks ago and no problems, in combination of normal dropping and the fact that this was not her usual vet, but somebody straight put of school makes us doubt this theory... Complicated huh?

The rabbit went completely apathic yesterday and got a home-made infusion of salt and water...very unorthodox, but no vet available on a sunday-night.... it worked though and she seems to feel better now, also gets Baytril since Saturday...

The vet doesn't believe in the stitches-theory and I have been on the phone with people in Holland, Belgium and Switzerland to discuss this... it's all quite strange...
Untill now, no other cases like this, so I understand the vets reflection...

Clicquot said:

Yes...BUT...it ressembles bacteries wich are always present in rabbits... and since both rabbits have been trheated against coc about 3 months ago AND there was the spaying 6 weeks ago and no problems, in combination of normal dropping and the fact that this was not her usual vet, but somebody straight put of school makes us doubt this theory... Complicated huh?
...

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Most rabbits carry a small amount of coccidia in their systems and a healthy adult rabbit should be more than capable of handling this....usually an adult only becomes ill as a result of cocciddia if their immune system is already compromised in the primary instance.

Your vet should be able to tell from a feacal sample if there was a more than manageable amount of the bacteria present and of course active Coccidiosis is usually quite symptomatic.

Can I ask why they were treated with a coccidiostat in the first place?

Sooz said:

Most rabbits carry a small amount of coccidia in their systems and a healthy adult rabbit should be more than capable of handling this....usually an adult only becomes ill as a result of cocciddia if their immune system is already compromised in the primary instance.

Your vet should be able to tell from a feacal sample if there was a more than manageable amount of the bacteria present and of course active Coccidiosis is usually quite symptomatic.

Can I ask why they were treated with a coccidiostat in the first place?

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The first time it was diagnosed correctly ,by a competent vet, they were 10 weeks and it occured after they moved, typical for young rabbits...but that has been 3 months ago... anyway, we are certain it is NOT coc... adults rabbits don't suffer from it like that and she was very close to death yesterday... the infusion revived her...

Meanwhile she is on metacam and baytril, so we are quite clueless about what has caused this... Normally an ordinary stasis would be the evindent diagnose, only the dropping were normal all the time,allthough she was not eating. But we can't rule it out either becuase she was given gut-stimulant at the same time...

This is a puzzle... we decided to advise against testing blood, kidneys and all that for the moment, untill she recovers more...the results would not be clear we think when a rabbit is in this state...

Oh, just in case you are wondering, I am speaking with Esther from medirabbit about this, she lives near me and we have become friends, so I do have somebody who knows practically everything there is to know about rabbit-medicin...but sometimes you just can't tell...

1 of my bridge bun Goofball, had her leg removed due to bone cancer. There is a 1.5 in. long wound. My concern at the time, was not just because she may chew on the sutures, but infection as well.

Although many vet said the wound needs to breathe, you can easily put bandage on and it will eventually healed. In my case, that's what I done.

I then put non-stick "green" painter tape around the pad, wrap around her fur on all for corners (cross diagonal). They are non stick, as long as you remove them once a day, it doesn't stick to her skin, not to mention I warp it around her fur.

The method works perfectly. The pad is so large, she can't dig thru the pad and touch the wound. And if 1 pad is not large enough, get a 2nd one. A big box of 100 is only like $15.

Now, supposedly, they said the wound needs to breathe, but it will still sealed w/ the pad and prevent you a case of infection.

She is getting worse again... bit of fever (although an metacam and baytril) en some poop wicht is not as it should be...not real liquid, but not dry either... she bites when you try to touch her tummy, she does this when she is in pain....but now she is still eating... very strange...

She is going to the vet tonight, have some bloodtest done... Vet wanted to keep her, but we don' think that is such a good idea...

Edit. there is nothing to see...the wound healed perfectly well, it has been 6 weeks since spaying

Oh God...this is so fooilish...

First the good news...allthough she is in a bad state right now, we understand what is going in and she should recover...

She went to the vets yesterday ,because the rabbit was getting worse again... Before she drove off , I consulted Esther and we talked a bit about possibilities, the questions she should ask etc...
I put all this in an email and added that we should not exclude worms...alltough the vet ruled that out on Thursday, but gave her one dosis of panacur anyway...
I send this email and Esther writes back almost immediatly, stating that dying worms cause a lot of toxics set free in the intestin, she sai that some worms produce so many toxics when dying that they could kill a horse...
Five minutes afterwards ,the owner send me a text stating she just found a worm....:shock:

The vet has taken more then 2 hours to see her and explain everything...there was an echo made of the wound, the liver and the intestin and a blood-sample taken.
Diagnose: too much activity in the intestin, caused by worms!!!!
When she received the panacur at the vets on thursday, part of the worms started dying and this set lots of toxins free in the intestin and the blood... THAT'S why she was doing much ,much worse a few hours after her visit to the vet...
Today, again she is in pain because of this, but once the worms are gone, she should get better....

The rabbit in question has been threated against worms 3 months ago, but apparently those suckers seem to more and more resistent against panacur. The vet suspects that the first threatment (allthough repeated as it should) was not suffisient, if it was, the infection by worms couldn't have been so bad in such short period...

I learned a lot this weekend ,so I wanted to share this information with all of you.....
I keep my fingers crossed for Eufrasie ,hopefully she will be better soon...

EC

A little update ,because this is something that might be interesting...

The rabbit in question kept having mild forms of stasis and was taken to the vet and stayed there for 3 days in obeservation.
The vet suspected EC and took bloodsamples. This takes more than a week, because there is no lab in Belgium that is able to do that test.

A few days afterwards the rabbit suddenly turned blind and we decided to start threating her for EC before the results came in...
A few days ago EC was confirmed by the lab.

This rabbit had during severall weeks no classical symptoms, no apparent effekt on the nervoussystem, the only thing showing was weight loss and stasis. Meanwhile we know that these are these can be signs of EC, but they are rarely recognised as being that.

Eufrasie meanwhile is doing better, she seems to have regained her sight a bit and we hope that she wil recover completely.
I hope her story can help some other rabbits.

Oh, I forgot, other then stasis Eufrasie also got aggresive sometimes. She started biting her owner when she was a real sweet rabbit before. Now a week after we started threatment, she is back to her usual self.