From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2003-08-16 18:11:04 UTC
Subject: RE: Isulinoma treatment questions
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <2812191.1061057464354.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Okay, these are bits of info which may help you and others:
Giving the ml volume of the Pred unfortunately tells nothing about how much is being given because Pediapred comes in at least two doses, generic liquid Prednisolone comes in at least one more, and compounded pred comes in a huge range. As a result for people to know how much Pred is being given it is ESSENTIAL to tell how many mg/ml are in the med. This is true in general for meds: for liquid meds anyone needs to give the mg/ml or to figure out the mg. For solid meds anyone needs to put in the mg of the solid med because tablets and other forms come in many levels of mg of active ingredient.
If your vet is prescribing the standard 1 ml/mg Pediapred, for instance, there is a LONG way to go before you max out, but your vet may be using an old text and not know that Pred is now often considered a med with maximum doses dependent on how well the individual animal tolerates it (BTW, Lasix is like that, too).
What is tolerated varies a lot. We have a small adult male with IBD who simply doesn't tolerate anything over 1 mg per day of Prednisolone, but we had a very small elderly female who absolutely thrived on 5 mg a day when she had lymphoma and insulinoma till her disease advanced too far.
When you give doses, please, everyone, put a 0 before the decimal point; for instance for one half of an mg write 0.5 mg; that prevents misreadings and also helps our members with imparied vision. It is a comon technique in pharmacy according to FHL pharmacist members' statements in the past, and is also common in many fields of science to reduce accidental error rates.
Proglycem is a good med for some ferrets but not all respond to it. Test with a small batch first since it is expensive. You can do this by accessing the compounding pharmacy list in the Ref Shelf of Files at http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth . MANY compounding pharmacies ship.
Some ferrets who do not process Prednisone well do very well on Prednisolone which skips the liver step.
If the pancreatic problems are due to lympho then it may progress more rapidly. I'm sorry to have to add that but we've been there twice. If that is the case I would consider adding sugar to the diet IF your vet thinks that it would make sense to do that at this time, or discuss when to do so. It can sometimes give extra quality time in such a situation. The most recent one we had with advanced insulinoma got 3 extra good months when her meds wouldn't hold by using that trick.