Crocodile Tears Syndrome in Persian Cat | Gusto-Lacrimal Reflex

Hey, guys. Dr. Lara here today I'm here with Sailor, and Sailor is a 3 and a half month old Persian kitten. And so Sailor's coming in today because he is having some discharge from his eyes or some tearing. And so mom, you know, we had tried putting him on some antibiotic drops for his tears. Sometimes with the Persians, what will happen is they will go ahead and they have a smashed face. So they're much more prone to getting ocular discharge. There's a duct that sits right here where normally what will happen is all the old tears will go into that duct. And that duct, which is like a little tube, goes into the nose and it drains all the old tears. So as new tears are produced, the old ones go in there. But with these smash face breed animals, whether it's the bulldog, English bulldogs, French bulldogs, Persians, that kind of stuff, that duct, instead of being a nice straight line, sometimes can be scrunched up. And so it's much more easily clogged. And so that was one of the things that I was anticipating was a problem with Sailor. Now when mom came back, she said, you know, he's still having a problem, but the thing that she noticed was it's actually happening only around the time that he eats. And so I went ahead and the thing that I tell people is I don't know everything there is to know. If you want somebody who knows somebody that knows everything, go somewhere else. People need to be honest about the amount of information that medical information is out there. So I went ahead and I did some research, and it is possible that Sailor may be suffering from something called a gustolacrimal reflex. Now, what that means is that when he goes ahead and his taste receptors are stimulated, it causes him to produce tears. What we call this is. Hold on, hold on, give me a second. Sorry. I was trying to get a tear out for you guys. I couldn't do it. Crocodile tears. And so normally it is something that happens only in one side. It can happen in both sides. And so one thing that mom also did notice was that in this particular cat, it doesn't happen so much with the dry food. And so one of the things that I'm wondering is if it is potentially tied to the fact that the wet food is more fragrant than the dry food. And that's why she doesn't see as much of a reaction when he eats his dry food. Something really, really uncommon. I haven't seen this in the 12 years of practice. Something really, really cool. I was really excited about it. I was happy to be able to share it with you guys. If you guys have any questions about this particular topic, please leave it in the comment box. If you found this video helpful, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe, share, and thanks for watching. Have a great day and be safe.