Dr. Lera Clone walks through diagnosing and treating corneal ulcers in dogs, using a Norwegian elkhound named Stormy as an example. Ulcers often start with chemical irritation like shampoo in the eye. Fluorescein stain under black light confirms the diagnosis, and treatment means topical antibiotics, a cone collar to stop the dog from scratching, and absolutely no steroids.
Hey, guys, My name is Dr. Laird here in Lake Santa Hospital. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about corneal ulcers. So if you guys come over here, we have Stormy. And Stormy is a Norwegian elkhound. And so Stormy came in because she was squinting both of her eyes. And that was, I want to say, two days before Christmas. And we. She had just been bathed. And so one of the things that can happen when you're bathing a dog or your head or whatever is if the shampoo gets into their eye, it can cause kind of like a chemical burn and turn into an ulcer. So usually what will happen is when you go to bathe your dog or your cat, even make sure that you put some oil based lubricant in their eyes. So that way, if you do happen to get some shampoo in their eye, you don't have to necessarily worry about them getting a chemical stain. So we went ahead, we diagnosed that ulcer, and so we sent her home with some antibiotics without any sort of steroids. If you put steroids in the eye with a corneal ulcer, you will make that corneal ulcer worse and they will most likely need some sort of ophthalmic surgery or eye surgery. Okay. The other thing that is really critical when you are treating a corneal ulcer is to have that cone of healing, or cone of shame as some people call it, or the technical term is an Elizabethan collar. The really important reason is because the dogs will try and rub it. And if they are rubbing their eye with a corneal ulcer, there is a possibility that they may make it worse. Secondly, when you are getting them a cone for a corneal ulcer, you do not want to get one of these more comfortable ones. The reason being is because the inflatable ones that look like a hemorrhoid cushion, those hemorrhoids that hurts, the hemorrhoid cushion, one, if they are really, really sharp, they will actually go to something that protrudes and they will rub their eye on. So it is really, really important that you have one of those obnoxious collars that sticks out. And it's hard because if they do try to go and rub their eye on something, it will prevent them from being able to reach that. Okay? So right now we've already gone ahead and put in some local anesthetic in her eye, because if you don't, there's a possibility that the stain might sting. So we don't want to cause any sort of discomfort. Now what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and put some of this stain in the ey. This is called the fluorescein stain. And as you can see, it is nice and neon green yellow. We're gonna go ahead and put some in her eye. So let's see here. She is not a calm ish dog. She is a little bit more rambunctious. And I want you guys to see what that looks like because mom has been saying that, oh, she loves me. So let's go ahead, let's put a little bit of this and you'll see the technique is to come from behind and squirt just one drop. And she's actually doing very, very well. A lot better than I thought that she was going to do. We're just going to wipe the excess, be very gentle with them. And then what we're going to do is we're going to kill the lights and then we are going to use a black light to go ahead and look at her eye. If you guys look through the magnification, see here. So she used to actually have an ulcer on this eye and it looked like a dried puddle and she no longer has that. So the ulcer is healing really, really nicely. This is also good to good stuff to use when you go to the club. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, she has no evidence of an ulcer. She's behaving really, really well. And so I was going to show you how to put drops in a dog's eye who is calm and ginger, but starving. You did so well. You did so well. I know, look at that. And usually she's a big kisser and she's not kissing me. That's how much she loves this. Notice the sarcasm. Okay. All right, so if you guys have any questions about this particular topic, please leave them in the comment box. If you found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and thanks for watching. Have a great day.
