Corneal Ulcer/Conjunctivitis - Treatment Options?

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rodneyc8063

Active member
Joined
Dec 5, 2012
Messages
29
Location
Toronto, Canada
So my chin has been going through a number of health issues in one of her eyes. Its morphed from being an abcess above the eye, to a bulging eye and now apparently a corneal ulcer with conjunctivitis - This is all happened for the past few months.

I just got a new vet, and they suspect that the reason why my chin has a corneal ulcer is because of the bulging eye. Apparently a corneal ulcer can be caused usually by trauma, or some debris in a chins eye. But unfortunately since my chin has a bulging eye, my vet suspects that its bulged "just enough" that my chin cant properly close her eye fully - Causing it to dry, causing the cornea to erode and a corneal ulcer.

We have a plan in place where we will unfortunately need to remove the eye due to the bulging (I wont get into that in this thread but the vet suspects its a retrobulbar abscess), but just before we execute that plan we are doing other diagnostic testing and trying to treat her current sympthoms as best we can in the hopes that we can avoid removing the eye and also diagnose the true root cause of the bulging.

Meanwhile, my chin has a corneal ulcer on her eye. I am attaching photos for anyones reference, I hate to show it as my little girl isnt looking her best.

Currently for her corneal ulcer they are telling us to use Ciloxan (or Ciprofloxacin) eye drops to help, as well as apply an eye ointment (Optixcare) and apply it up to 4 times a day. She is also taking 0.2 ml of metacam per day for pain management.

We first noticed the following in her eye

almond eye debris.jpg

As you can see it looks "smudged" on her cornea. We couldnt quite tell what this was initially, so we tried to flush her eye out with distilled water - So you will notice her fur looks matted in the above photo.

Prior to this we did occasionally see white discharge from her eye, but we assumed it was due to the bulging eye.

Within a week her eye started to look like the following

IMG-20200525-WA0004.jpg
IMG-20200525-WA0002.jpg

You will notice that the top part of her eye looks "rough", not smooth and glassy glossy. That part of her eye happens to be rigggghhhttt around where she seems to leave her eye open more often then not from what I can tell. so it seems to be drying out. Also obviously you can see the sticky white discharge.

We are currently cleaning out her eye as best as we can, but that white goop stuff is super sticky nasty. The vet said that when producing tears, our bodies create a mix of protein, mucus etc to help coat and protect our eyes. When this mix is out of balance, thats what is causing the white goopiness now. Its just dried out sticky tears. We are also giving the medication as prescribed by our vet.

So this all happened within a week, and with her current medication regiment she thankfully is maintaining her weight and still eating/drinking/playing on her own. Although a bit more clumsy then usual.

Its been a few days since we started the medication, but heres a few questions I was hoping others can share their experience

-Usually for a corneal ulcer, how long would it take for it to heal?

-Are there any other medications, or anything else we can try to help with her eye?

Again, I am currently working with a vet and am just awaiting to do further diagnostic testing to try and find the root cause of all of this. We likely will need to remove her eye, but before jumping to that step we are just trying to treat her as best as we can in the interim until we get conclusive results and can validate that her eye does truely need to be removed.

Any advice or insight is greatly appreciated.
 
One of my chinchillas had a corneal ulcer ages ago and it took about eight months for it to heal completely. I was bringing him to work with me every day so I could administer the drops and/or ointment as directed. The vet told me the ointment actually coats the eye better and helps it to heal faster, but it was hard to apply. The drops were much easier, and so we did those for the majority of the time. Luckily he hasn't had it happen again, as apparently it can become chronic.
 
One of my chinchillas had a corneal ulcer ages ago and it took about eight months for it to heal completely. I was bringing him to work with me every day so I could administer the drops and/or ointment as directed. The vet told me the ointment actually coats the eye better and helps it to heal faster, but it was hard to apply. The drops were much easier, and so we did those for the majority of the time. Luckily he hasn't had it happen again, as apparently it can become chronic.

Wow 8 months!

That makes me feel a bit better, its been about 1.5 weeks and our chin seems to have less discharge? But generally it looks marginally better, but no worse.

I was worried about why was it taking so long to heal, but wow 8 months!

I totally agree with you for the ointment! The drops are easy to apply, i just pry her eye open and *BLOOP*

The ointment........oh man i feel bad as I think i get it on her fur more then her eye.

I really appreciate you sharing your experience, when I google things I find pages saying it should heal within a few weeks - But at this rate I doubt it :(
 
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