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Blocked tear-ducts - what causes and treatments?

nessar

Warren Veteran
Annabella has a blocked tear duct. Symptoms are a runny eye, the discharge is cloudy and goopy.

Dental spurs have been ruled out, she had a dental today. They tried to flush both tear-ducts but couldn't get the cannula in the blocked one, as it is completely blocked up.

She has had fucithalmic vet drops which cleared it up after a couple of days (treated for a week) but it came back after a couple of weeks. Now trying Maxitrol drops, which are an anti-inflammatory, to see if that helps.

She is back on monday to see how she is responding to treatment.

Any ideas on causes/treatment of blocked tear-ducts?
 
its quite often due to elongated tooth roots which then occlude the tear duct. this is detectable on an xray +/- using a contrast medium through the tear duct to detect the blockage. once the problem tooth is detected extraction may be required. hope this helps
 
its quite often due to elongated tooth roots which then occlude the tear duct. this is detectable on an xray +/- using a contrast medium through the tear duct to detect the blockage. once the problem tooth is detected extraction may be required. hope this helps

This exactly. I had a bun whose front teeth were not misaligned and wore down fine but the roots overgrow somehow and pressed against the tear ducts blocking them!
 
My Alf has a blocked tear duct, can't remember which eye it is but tooth extraction is not do-able in his case. He was on three medications for a while (I know it was metacam but I can't remember the other thingies) as well as two lots of eye drops twice daily, one of which was designed to try and help break down the gunk that was built up, or something similar. It worked really well and he's now down to just 0.3ml metacam x2 daily, which he loves! I'm still reducing it though, the aim is to get it as low as possible. We also changed hays, no idea whether that really had anything to do with it or if it was just a fluke but his eye certainly got better when we got a less dusty hay. At his worst he was having flushes weekly as well as x-rays, which was very expensive - £1000 in 5/6 months ish. His eye looked a right mess, bless him. Alsol his other tear duct is not flushable, it's 'malfunctioning' so if that gets blocked we're in serious trouble...

Thankfully the metacam seems to be working a treat and he's not had any problems since before October, probably longer! If you saw him now, you wouldn't know he had a problem, whereas at his worst we genuinely thought we could lose him.
 
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