Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Spit in THAT eye

So this post is going to be slightly ironic for a lot of reasons. First, because Insane is really the eye guru- she LOVES eyes. I HATE eyes. I think they're creepy.



So last week I have an odd eye case. A young pomerianian mix dog that had acute onset of blepherospasm and conjunctivitis. I stained it and it was negative for corneal ulcers so I sent him home with some triple antibiotic eye ointment to see if we could get a response with that.



He came in about a week later and his eye was MUCH worse. He now had bupthalmos (enlarged eye), marked blephrospasm (painful eye) and worse drainage. So I told him he needed to go to Big Vet School An Hour Away if he wanted to save this dog's eye, because it was obvious without doing an IOP (intraocular pressure) that the dog had some kind of acute onset glaucoma. He agreed and made an appointment for two days from them. I sent him home with some pain medicine to help keep the dog comfortable.



A week later he calls and said that he didn't keep the appointment at BVSAHA because "the dog was getting better." However now he thinks the dog's eye ruptured. So we make an appointment the following day to enuculate the dogs eye (take it out).



I enuculeated the dog's eye the following day. This was the first one I've ever done, and it was quite interesting! Very bloody. But I sent the eye into the pathologist because I needed to know whether the dog had Blasto in the eye or not.



So the pathologist calls me today- the dog's glaucoma was caused by heartworm disease! (BTW, we had tested him for heartworm the same day and he was positive- we started treating him) Apparently it's rare and very cool. So the pathologist is going to publish the case and I get to be a minor author! Very exciting- especially when I just kind of stumbled on to this one...

I'll try to think of a funny story soon!

1 comment:

The Homeless Parrot said...

I didn't even know HW disease could cause glaucoma! Were there heartworms in the eye?