From:
Bruce Williams, DVM
Date: 2001-06-26 22:00:00 UTC
Subject: Re: REPOST - Pulminary Disease
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., "Alberta Ferret Society - President"
<ferts@t...> wrote:
> I didn't get a response to my first post so thought I'd try posting
again. Being new to the list I'm not sure what the expected response
time is so forgive me if I'm being a pest!
You're absolutely not a pest!
> > Bailey is a very petite 1.4 yr old female ferret who was
surrendered
> to our society along with 2 male cagemates of the same approx age.
> Bailey appeared to have some sort of respitory illness going on as
> her breathing sounded very congested. Antibiotics did not clear it
> up. She continued to be energetic, eating well, eliminating well,
no
> wasting but the congestion did not go away. It neither got better
or
> worse.
> Our vet was puzzled and asked us to leave her for a few days for
> observation and to have x-rays taken. The following is the message
> he left on my answering machine. Please excuse the spelling.
>
> "X-rays show a bula (?) indicative of some kind of obstruction. I'm
> wracking my brain wondering where such a young ferret would get
this
> from. My best answer is that this is emphazema secondary to
possibly
> some chronic obstruct pulmonary disease" He has prescribed
> prednisone.
Dear Barbara -
This is not ringing any bells at all, and I'm going to have to say
that I am not familiar with the radiographic presentation of bullae
(your spelling was very close) in a ferret's lung. We can rarely see
these in cats as the result of a lung fluke (not identified in
ferrets), in rhesus monkeys as the result of a mite (once again not
in ferrets), human smokers (make sure to check her cage for empty
packs and matches, and rarely, a ruptured abscess can present
radiographically as a bulla-like lesion.
But the most important point here is that making any type of
assessment on an X-ray that you haven't seen, based on a voicemail
interpreation by another vet - that is not something that probably is
not appropriate for online consultation. We really can't give any
useful information here on a unique radiographic case without a
chance to look at the radiograph.
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams