Temporary Sticky - azithromycin feedback?

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sun Feb 22, 2015 4:18 pm


Have any of you used azithromycin? Do you think it should be added to the safe medications list?

If you used it, what dose did you use and most importantly, what medical condition were you treating?
Last edited by Lynx on Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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MildredM
The-Fairy-in-my-Heart

Post   » Sun Feb 22, 2015 5:19 pm


TWO weeks ago today we almost lost Flo. She had already been ill for a week. With the help of the vet we found she had a very bad inner ear infection when we investigated why she wasn't eating her usual big bowl of salad or hay.

On that particular Sunday she was listless, couldn't walk, wouldn't eat and honestly looked as though we wouldn't even make it to see the vet to help her out her misery.

While we were at the vets, and as Daphne drew the needle ready to relieve her, Flo shook her head, looked up in disbelief, and started to wriggle on the table! A huge, almost solid dollop followed by a load of gunk oozed out her left ear! The vet suggested we persevere with the Bayrtil which we had started the week before.

Monday saw some improvement but on Tuesday we were back at the listless stage, back at 'death's door'. On Wednesday the vet tried to drain her ear to help relieve the obvious pressure all the goo was causing under anaesthetic.

The drain didn't happen. It seems the minute Daphne gave her a whiff of gas, Flo stopped breathing and it took all their expertise to bring her back from the brink. She came home that evening and we all thought that would be that, there was little hope she would survive the night.

But survive she did! I spent all Thursday morning trawling the internet to see what we could do for her. I came across several cases where guineas had been treated with the anti biotic Zithromax (azithromycin).

We went straight to the vet, they didn't stock it but obtained it for us the next day.

And, guess what? It WORKED! There was an improvement after the second dose and just a few days later Flo was very much back to normal!

And THIS Sunday she is in perfect health (apart from now being totally deaf due to the infection damaging her ear drums). She is as bossy as ever, and as greedy as . . . well, as a hungry piggy can be!

There were NO side effects and the improvement was noticeable after the second daily dose.

The dose was 1ml per kilo per day. This was from a solution prepared by the vet. It has to be kept in the fridge and we could only get a 4 or 5 days supply (as it has to be prepared fresh, I think).

I think the vet said it took 200mg/ 5ml - powder to prepare 15 mls.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sun Feb 22, 2015 5:43 pm


Did the vet ever culture the bacteria? Were the cases you came across of guinea pigs treated with zithromax also for ear infections? Did the vet do an xray by any chance?

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:24 pm


Hopefully others will chime in but IIRC azithromycin has been used successfully several times on this board. I want to say Pinta was one of the first.

It definitely is in the dangerous group. That said, like many of the dangerous meds it can address infections that the cavy-safe ABs cannot. I want to say nebulization is the safest way to use it, but as MildredM points out, in some cases nebulization won't get it where it needs to go.

My gut hunch would be to make some kind of addendum to the dangerous (or safe) meds page that specifies that it can be used effectively but MUST be used with extreme caution.

I'll be very interested to see what others' experiences are. It would be absolutely wonderful to be able to add it to a list of usable ABs, if not a list of "safe" ABs.

Mildred -- I'm so thankful for Flo's sake that goo fell out when it did!

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:26 pm


It is not on my dangerous meds list.

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CavyHouse
Supporter in '11

Post   » Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:31 pm


We had a piggy who came to us with a headTilt and URI. We tried Baytril and TMS repeatedly for the URI and it would not go away. Finally after a few months with no progress we tried Azithromycin. Our piggy did great on it and it cleared up the stubborn URI. If I remember right, we had to go a couple rounds of it too.

Our piggy had no digestive upsets with any of the ABs. The head tilt still remains to this day.

Our vet doesn't like to use Azithromycin much though.

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MildredM
The-Fairy-in-my-Heart

Post   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 3:28 am


Lynx, the vet did offer to do a culture but by then Flo had been on Baytril for a week plus the culture would take a week to get the results and by then we didn't think Flo would last that long.

Yes, the guineas I came across were prescribed Azithromicin for iei's.

And the vet did offer to x-Ray, in fact she was going to do that while she was under anaesthetic for the ear to be drained, but due to Flo's adverse reaction the vet took the decision it was more important to bring Flo round rather than keep her under for the procedures. She couldn't stress to me enough how near they were to loosing her.

Talisman - you and me both! In hindsight my experience with Flo WAS different to a guinea with teeth problems. Even though I had to hand/syringe feed her Critical Care for almost 3 weeks she accepted it readily and over that time only lost 70g in weight which isn't much considering she wasn't eating anything at all for herself including hay.

I meant to add earlier, Flo has also been having a daily dose of Probiotics.

Image

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Siouxsie

Post   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 3:31 pm


My Sanctuary foster piggy has had a very hard time with an infected tooth that keeps coming back after we keep removing it. Last time she was in the hospital for 3 weeks because of a terrible abscess that occurred in her mouth from it. That was maybe 2 months ago, she went in last week for a molar trim (a pretty regular thing for her - her malloclusion is so bad) and they found the incisor was growing back yet again and was infected. They pulled it and she is on antibiotics.

The time she was in the hospital and now this time she is on Chlorophenical as well as the Xithro (which she loves! Cherry flavored). We are culturing the infection and hope to hear soon what the situation of that is.

But the Xithro really made the difference, I think. She is on .5 once a day.

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Waddles
Party Poop-er

Post   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:17 pm


MildredM,
Can I ask how Flo's teeth were during the time she was eating no hay, only Critical Care? Did they need regular trimming? If so, How often?

I have a pig in the same situation currently and appreciate any information I might be able to use to help her.

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CavyHouse
Supporter in '11

Post   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:22 pm


I'm posting this for a friend of mine. Her's piggy's name is Chooch.
I live in California, I have an excellent exotics vet. After many visits to the vets, tests, xrays etc. we still could not figure out what was wrong with Chooch. His eye was very red and constantly draining. The vet discovered a lot of extra calcification in his ears probably due to pneumonia untreated as a baby when I got him. He lost half his body weight, his balance was terrible, he would fall down to usually one side every foot he tried to walk, things were grim. Chooch is Baytril intolerate and nothing was working. He has always been a sensitive piggy. I contacted two friends who had used the Zythromax, called a vet in Europe and contacted an eye specialist in the UK. The eye specialist said that he had treated and saved about 5,000 piggies with the Zythro and to start at a low dose and slowly increase if needed. I spoke to my vet, he advised me of all the concerns of using Zythro, but Chooch was obviously dying. I decided to go for it, and low and behold the Zythro beat it, one morning after about 12 days I woke up and Chooch had a pea size ooz of dark intense yellow under his eye... well Chooch recovered.. that said, it really did a number on his intestinal system and I was diligent with using a live acidophilus. It took about 6 to 8 months for Chooch to get his flora back and his stools have never quite been the same and he didn't put all his weight back on. I would up using 3rd cut Timothy hay and that really helped him getting up to a reasonable weight. I am thankful the Zythro saved my baby... I also think that if I had kept him on it too long the Zythro would have killed him. Tough call, but I am very glad I tried it. After doing a bunch of research my guess is the extra calcification in Romeo's ears is a breeding ground for bacteria and this problem may come back. My guess is that he had some had ball of infection pushing up against his temporal lobe. If the problem comes back, which it could, I would be very conservative in using the Zythro again, but I am glad I did.. he is still alive today because of it. I do have two piggy friends who have had success with the Zythro when it comes to stubborn infections.

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MildredM
The-Fairy-in-my-Heart

Post   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 4:49 pm


Both these cases are really interesting.

Waddles, Flo's teeth seem ok, amazingly. I certainly worried about them though. I hope your guinea is ok.

Countrylass

Post   » Tue Feb 24, 2015 2:03 pm


Daisy had it for a respiratory infection as the Septrin wasn't having any effect. She had one dose and couldn't use her back legs for about six hours afterwards. By not use I mean she had to drag her legs around using only her front legs. That one dose did however clear up the respiratory problems strangely enough.

Ambam had it for a bowel abscess after the vet couldn't remove all of it during surgery. She took it for four weeks. There was weight loss despite giving her plenty of fibreplex.

Both of these were over two years ago so I don't have any records of dosage, just that we had to go to a chemist as the vets didn't stock it and it used to treat STD's in humans which could have been embarrassing!

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