Is repeated anesthesia harmful for buns?

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pinupchick

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Does anesthesia have a cumulative effect in rabbits? Is repeat anesthesia harmful? This will be Ula's 3rd time under anesthesia (spay, molar trim last year) and she's 6 yrs old now. Is there a risk to her health in getting repeat molar trims? I know that repeat anesthesia can cause issues in dogs, but I'm ignorant to its effects in rabbits.

Thanks!
 
Part of it depends how their being put under.
Is she being given pre-meds, then an injectable anesthetic, then being maintained under with a gas anesthetic?

Or are they pre-med, gas anesthetic?
Pre-med, injectable?
Or just Gas?

And what type of "gas" are they using?
 
I just called to ask that and they said they usually use isoflurane, but if the case seems more minor and less work is done, they use injectables. I just talked to a vet tech so she couldn't specify and basically implied that they determine the anesthetic used on a case-by-case basis.

Her molar spurs are relatively minor so I assume the procedure would be on the short end time-wise. They also x-ray beforehand to make sure that there is no chest congestion or anything like that.

The same vet has done her spay and previous molar trim and will be doing this upcoming trim. She's quite-rabbit savvy and Ula recovered well from the previous procedures. My concern is that she's getting older and it seems that molar trims will have to be done once a year in the future.
 
I think it all sounds okay.

Usually just giving them gas (no injectable) is easier on their system as it leaves their system much faster so they awake and recover quicker.

I have never heard of clinics doing x-rays before putting an animal under like that.... That seems like more harm then good, and a good way to get your money. They can easily look at her from the exterior and listen to her lungs/heart to check for congestion....

At her age it might be a good idea to get bloodwork before she goes under (bloodwork is usually done once yearly) so that would fall perfectly in time for her teeth to be done. This is the best way to check if her system can handle being being supressed by the anesthetic and weather her liver/kidneys are capeable of expelling the drugs properly.

If they were putting her under every few months, i would worry, but once a year isnt that bad, and when she gets into the late stages of her senior years, I would be more cautious. But the x-rays really seem pointless....

As long as their healthy, and their system can handle it, go for it.
 
It should be ok. I can understand the x-rays if there is some concern that she might have pneumonia. With a middle-aged bunny, it's not that common for spontaneous pneumonia to occur, but the vet must have a reason to do it. Most vets don't do x-rays on awake rabbits because they are hard to keep still. With age, it gets riskier and the chance of pre-op lung problems (for gas anesthesia) or kidney/liver issues (for injectible) increases. There is not a build-up of the compound in the body to my knowledge, though.
 
So the vet isn't doing the molar trim today because Ula's x-ray showed lung cloudiness again (this happened last year too). She's going on Baytril and the vet said it looks like she harbours pasteurella.

Is Baytril okay for that? We're going to repeat the x-ray after a 3 week course of meds. Ugh. Poor bunny. =(
 
Baytril can clear up infections, but a longer-term infection deeper in the body is more likely to be resistant to it. How long has she had the infection? Years or just weeks?
 
I'm not sure. She's pretty asymptomatic as it's lower and not upper. She had her molars trimmed in March of last year and the x-ray also showed cloudiness in the lungs. She was put on Septra and the followup x-ray was clear. It could have resurged due to inadequate antibiotic, or it could be recent.

The vet that prescribed Baytril is different than the one that prescribed Septra. This time the doctor said the lungs looked "moderately" infected, whereas last time it was "mild." Ula's eating patterns have been erratic for the past two years. She battles sharp molars and I guess recurrent pasteurella. She's never had Baytril before.
 
Septra is pretty old-school--it's a sulfa drug so it's one of the first types of antibiotics discovered. Baytril might still work, but since she's had LRI before, and it was more than a year ago, I would still suspect that Baytril is probably not the best choice. It is fairly expensive to do the diagnostic to tell if it's being treated since it's otherwise asymptomatic (x-ray), so going with the "big guns" in a bunny at middle age is probably a good idea. With younger buns you worry about breaking out the newer, stronger antibiotics because they have many many years left, and if you get their resident bacteria resistant to the top-of-the-line antibiotics at a young age, you can run out of antibiotics to use by the time they get old. In a middle-aged bun, that's not as big a concern. It might be time to break out the Zithromax (although it can cause more GI issues than Baytril), Pen G, chloramphenicol, or Convenia. Convenia is probably the most convenient one because the vet injects it once every 5 days.

Another thing you might want to try is nebulizing. It can take a while to find one, so I'd start looking now. You can usually get a nebulizer for less than $60 off craigslist or ebay. Sterile saline water or solutions you'd use for human nasal irrigation (think Neti Pot) can be used as the solution, or the doctor can have you nebulize antibiotics as well. Saline nebulization really helped our Benjamin with pneumonia. They tolerate it ok as long as it's only once a day for less than half an hour, and I think doing a nebulization chamber is better than the mask.
 
I'd be worried about GI side effects from antibiotics since her eating is erratic at the best of times. Is Baytril fairly well-tolerated in bunnies? She had an issue on Septra for a few days and then started eating normally after the course of a week or so. She's only had two doses of Baytril at this point, but she's eating hay and pellets and pooping slightly smaller fecals than usual.
 
Baytril is better tolerated than septra, but worse than injectible antibiotics.
 
I think I'll see what the Baytril does, and if she persists or gets another infection afterwards, I'll insist on a more advanced antibiotic. Although they might insist I get a referral to an exotics specialist, which I don't really have the money (or transportation for). *sigh*

I know one veterinary clinic in my city has small animal dental x-ray machinery, so maybe they're more advanced in terms of rabbit medicine as well. I guess if this doesn't work I'll try to get her to a different vet.

Why is rabbit medicine so outdated in so many places? Frustrating!
 

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