Recurring pneumonia (formerly heart issues/disease) piggies

[ceciliaxdee]

Hi

I am extremely sorry.

Apart from a lab test for which antibiotics the bug you dealing with is responsive to, there is little else you or your vet can do.

We have been seeing increasingly more resistancy cases with respiratory illnesses over the last 5 years or so, probably due to industrial overuse. It may be worth the expense in your case, though.

When Evie was sedated for X-rays my vet tried to extract a sample from her lungs but couldn’t get enough out to culture and didn’t want to risk continuing to poke there I might have to try a different piggie who is sick. Vet is trying another 2 weeks do Septrin and then reassess. Do they need to come off antibiotics for a period before a culture can be done?

 

[ceciliaxdee]

Just an update that these recurring respiratory flares are still happening every few months in the herd. Have been managed with Septrin successfully (2-6 weeks of treatment depending on when improvement seen). However one of our piggies Stormie went downhill earlier this month even though she was put on Septrin, we got her to the vets within 24 hours but X-rays showed severe respiratory disease and also bloat and she passed during our consult.
We took a lung biopsy to send off and received the results back. It’s E. coli causing the respiratory disease in the herd and it is susceptible to most antibiotics including Septrin, but weirdly penicillin resistant (which piggies can’t have anyway). The vet thinks Stormie’s immune system just wasn’t strong enough to fight it off we’ve been so sad dealing with Stormie’s death the last fortnight as it was so sudden.

In more positive news, Custard our lymphoma piggie is still stable 8 months on from diagnosis on daily prednisolone and furosemide. Although she’s had on and off periods where she’s also caught the respiratory infection. We’ll be getting her X-rayed again soon to check on the progress of her lymphoma.