Teeth spontaneously vanishing

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Liung

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I swear to any power listening that my buns have made it their life goal to develop every rare and weird health condition in existence. And today’s health condition is DISAPPEARING TEETH.

I brought Lahi and Delilah to the OVC for a checkup on Lahi’s ear which had a tumour surgically removed in December, and Delilah has a blocked tear duct that I wanted checked again.

And the vet comes back with “well everything you were worried about is fine, but here, have a bunch of new stuff to worry about.”

Delilah’s got pus buildup in her ears, which apparently if it gets too bad can cause head tilt and other neurological issues, and potentially eat into the bone and go septic. FUN. She’s now going to visit the OVC monthly to get her ears flushed with an oily solution designed to break up the pus. This is only management, the only actual “cure” is a major risky surgery to essentially drill into the ear canal through the bone to scoop it out, or something. Not even going to worry about that right now, that’s a lot of risk for something that isn’t currently causing problems.

Lahi needs his teeth trimmed once a year and so even though they hadn’t gotten bad enough to be hurting him, I said go ahead and do it, why wait until he’s in pain.

And when I went to pick them up, the vet showed me the pictures of his mouth. His right side is beautiful, teeth perfectly in line and flat. His left side... the top is a jumbled mess, which I expected. That was the side that caused so many issues back in 2014, had to have the very back molar removed entirely. It was pretty disturbing to actually see the extent of how bad they were but not surprising.

His left bottom side, however, was pretty much GONE. There is a single nub of a tooth showing. Everything else is just gums.

The vet said that this is not something that is completely unusual for rabbits, sometimes their teeth just start falling out if they have bad dental disease, or they start dissolving—!! I don’t remember exactly how she described it, I was sorta in shock, but she commented “sometimes it’s like we can just take a swab and just wipe their teeth away”. So when she saw that Lahi was missing all his teeth she hadn’t thought anything of it, assumed that was just normal for him... she straight up told me, “he’s had a couple previous extractions, right?”

But this is the first I’ve heard of it!! And Lahi has been getting his teeth done every year since Jan 2014!! And I feel like my previous vet probably would have told me if Lahi’s teeth were suddenly disappearing!

So did his bottom jaw just melt his left teeth in under a year?? WHY IS NATURE SO WEIRD?! WHY ARE RABBITS SO BIZARRE?!?!

I’m going to call my previous vet clinic tomorrow to ask if they have anything in their records from Lahi’s previous procedures about this, but my vet actually retired a couple months ago. If they didn’t take pictures then I just have to hope they can contact him and he’ll remember.

The OVC vet has promised to email me the pictures of Lahi’s teeth with his patient chart, I’ll post them here because truly this is a trip and a half. HIS TEETH ARE GONE. Apparently he’s missing some premolars on his top teeth, too!!

Lahi has only had one tooth removed, it was his upper left backmost molar, and I have it in a jar. They gave it to me when it was removed and I took it home and kept it.

IMG_2059.jpg

Where the rest of his teeth have gone, NO ONE KNOWS.
 
To clarify, now that I’m thinking about it:

Lahi is a 12 year old dwarf mix with a history of tooth problems, but only on his left TOP molars. The backmost left top molar was pulled when it became really wiggly. We were concerned that the bottom corresponding tooth would grow out of control without something to grind against, but whenever the vet looked there was nothing wrong with the bottom teeth, he seemed to have adjusted how he chewed to compensate and grind all his bottom teeth.

So the fact that every time my previous vet was all “yeah his bottom teeth look great considering there’s a tooth missing on the top” and now my current vet is showing me a picture of a bunch of gums and a single tooth nub where his bottom teeth should be...!!

Lahi eats lots of hay. I was finding that he was wasting a lot of Timothy hay, digging it out of the hay box to just pile in the litter box without seeming to eat much of it. I switched to orchard grass hay and now they’re eating tons. He eats plenty of hay for sure! And they are fed Versele Laga Cuni Complete, a really good food that is green across the board for the nutrient panel according to the Rabbit House’s food comparison chart.

They live in a condo and have no cage bars to chew on at all. They get an Ecotrition Snak Shak to chew on, which is admittedly not the best for them, but it keeps them busy and not chewing on my furniture, walls, or each other.
 
Okay READY FOR THIS?! Behold: Lahi’s appointment summary and the photos of his teeth!
IMG_1816.jpg

The two pictures on top, his right teeth, looking perfectly straight and even, his left upper teeth, looking like a jumbled mess and missing several premolars, and then his left bottom teeth. Tooth. Remaining last nubbin and expanse of EMPTY GUMS.
 
Wow! That's a shock for you I'm sure. I can't believe one side is completely normal vs. the decay of the other side. And the vet didn't find any sign of infection in the bone on xrays?
 
They actually sent me his xrays which was pretty cool but they’re chest x-rays, they never did an x-ray of his head. Should they? Can infection be seen on x-rays? The reason they didn’t do x-rays on Delilah to look for the source of the tear duct blockage is that there’s so much going on in the head that it’s too difficult to actually see anything. I dunno, can vets do the thing human dentists do and put a lead barrier behind the teeth so you only see one side?

But yeah I’m going to call my last vet to see if they have anything about this on file, since if not that means his teeth vanished within the year.

His right side is SO BEAUTIFUL. His left side is a disaster! I wouldn’t believe they were pictures from the same rabbit if I wasn’t there!
 
I just called my previous vet, indeed on the notes from his last dentistry it said his molars were all normal. He had a checkup in September where the notes also said all teeth normal, but the bottom teeth might not have necessarily been visible just using a mouth scope while he was awake. The OVC never noticed he was missing teeth until they had him under aesthetic.
 
Infection can be seen on xrays,. I just thought the vet would have wanted to do them with your bun already sedated to make sure nothing else was going on, but maybe your vet didn't find anything to think it was needed.

In researching, it doesn't sound that unusual for this to have happened with your bun. When rabbits get older their teeth can stop growing and then resorption can occur. It can also happen with rabbits in the advanced stages of dental malocclusion. So your bun had both going against him. Here's some info I found on it if you want to do a bit of reading.
'In many rabbits severe dysplasia may eventually result in complete cessation of growth due to ankylosis and resorption of the teeth (see below), which, perhaps paradoxically, can improve or even resolve the associated clinical signs.' page 58 top right column
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Dental_diseases/Differential/Rabbit_dentistry.pdf
https://www.harcourt-brown.co.uk/me...urse/3-complications-of-dental-procedures.pdf
http://www.ivis.org/proceedings/scivac/2005/Harcourt1_en.pdf?LA=1

This link talks about it as well towards the end under the topic 'treatment of advanced dental disease'. There are also some photos that look like your buns teeth. If you want to do any research it's called progressive syndrome of acquired dental disease(PSADD).
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...-in-pet-rabbits-2-Diagnosis-and-treatment.pdf

One thing I did read that seems important to mention, is that rabbits with several missing molars are more at risk of choking on hay. Probably because of the difficulty grinding it up. I guess as long as your bun keeps it on his good side he might be ok, but just something to consider and watch for any start of difficulties.
 

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