The Importance of Selecting an Experience Reptile Vet

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Originally Posted by Kinra

Thanks for sharing. It's always great to have more information on common/not so common illnesses. An experienced reptile vet is always good to have on hand, but sometimes can be hard to find. :(



It sounds more like this person wanted to profit from the death of an animal. Even if it had died of IBD it's unfair to blame the breeder after 7 years unless it has been in quarantine by itself for that long, which unrealistic. :rolleyes:

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I'm going to choose to be a bit more charitable..........................that is until he fails to pay me back for the necropsy. A full necropsy and histology ain't cheap.

I think a key point not to forget is that this whole incidence was brought on by feeding a prey item that was too large and then not properly dealing with the consequences of a regurge/vomiting episode.

i can add that even if your snake is just sick with something as simple as a respiratory infection its important to make sure your vet is properly doing his/her job. i learned the hard way.
i had ordered a snake online that came in sick. he had a respiratory infection and the seller was unwilling to take the animal back. so i took it to the vet and he said ok we will start him on baytril. he did no culture or sensitivity tests. even though i asked him to. he said their was no need as baytril was a broad spectrum anti biotic and it would wipe it out. well after a weeks worth of treatment snake showed no signs of getting better and died a few weeks later.
after reading on the boi of a few people that had bought from him ended up with uri and it was discovered that it was a common strain that was stronger than most and needed amakacin to wipe it out.
IF my vet had done the test he should have known what coarse of treatment to take.
adam jeffery

DR Jacobson who is well known is a specialist when it comes to OPMV here is some history on this nasty virus http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/college/de...myxovirus.html

It's amazing to me that someone would feed a medium sized rat to a children's python. But then again, there is no limit to the bounds of bad judgement.

Agonal movements aren't just a snake thing. They're common to most animals, including humans. I've seen humans exhibit agonal movements after gunshot wounds, at the end of death from lung cancer, and a variety of other things. They manifest differently in different species, but they aren't caused by a single trauma or disease in any as far as I've seen.

Skiploader, I see where you're coming from about people jumping the gun and assuming that all snake agonal movements are from IBD. Agonal type movements are caused by IBD. I also saw them in a copperhead my father killed with a hoe and that copperhead certainly didn't develop a case of IBD while my father was killing it. (BTW, my father wasn't in the habit of killing snakes, even though he feared and loathed them. The copperhead was in my mother's rock garden where his kids were playing)

Agonal movements are a sign of great pain or impending death. A number of things can cause great pain or impending death--not just IBD. And a number of things can appear to be agonal movements but are not. I've seen humans with neurological problems who look as if they are having the agonal movements of humans all of the time. Even a doctor or vet can't diagnose solely on appearances so it's nuts to assume that one condition which causes a particular set of symptoms, like the ones that commonly manifest in IBD.

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Originally Posted by Skiploder

I'm far from an expert on OPMV but it can be easily researched.

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Thanks! That is exactly the sort of summary I was hoping for, so the basics of this critical information are here in one thread. I will certainly be doing far more in depth research on my own as well.

Thank you for the info and explanations. I "Favorited" this thread for future reference.

While I find this thread extremely informative and I'm very glad it was posted, I cannot wrap my mind around someone experiencing a regurge and then immediately feeding the snake again and then again while it kept regurging. This to me is all kinds of wrong.

Notwithstanding I know that a regurge in snakes is serious, common sense should tell someone even with no knowledge it's a bad thing. Especially if the food had started to rot, and undoubtedly it was supremely nasty, common sense should tell you the snake needs time to recover from that.

At least you were able to find out the real reason it died, which counts for something.

Gale

Thank you for posting. It definitely shows the importance of necropsies in unknown deaths.

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Originally Posted by angllady2

While I find this thread extremely informative and I'm very glad it was posted, I cannot wrap my mind around someone experiencing a regurge and then immediately feeding the snake again and then again while it kept regurging. This to me is all kinds of wrong.

Notwithstanding I know that a regurge in snakes is serious, common sense should tell someone even with no knowledge it's a bad thing. Especially if the food had started to rot, and undoubtedly it was supremely nasty, common sense should tell you the snake needs time to recover from that.

At least you were able to find out the real reason it died, which counts for something.

Gale

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Gale:

I can wrap my mind about it. We see people post about what to do here when it happens. Some people feel that a snake needs to eat every week - period. There appears to be some lack of fulfillment if that belly isn't full every week.

Frankly what I can't wrap my mind around is the fact that a vet would diagnose IBD despite a recent history of regurges obviously related to food size. When I got the call, it was not pleasant, it was literally "you sold me a snake with IBD and if you don't make it right I'm going to the BOI with you."

The fact that a vet would give that definitive diagnosis without a shred of proof, taking the history of the animal into account or even doing any testing is beyond me. FWIW, this vet is listed on the "List" of reptile vets that newcomers get referred to.

There are several things here that bear keeping in mind - first and foremost is find a good vet. Second, there are fatal consequences to not following proper recuperative protocols when dealing with a regurge. Lastly, vets appear to be seeing OPMV more than IBD, but are seeing asymptomatic IBD animals succumbing to OPMV - not IBD.

Remember all the early horror stories about people rapidly losing most of their collections to IBD? I do. While I discounted a few of them because there were never definitive proof of IBD (and these later played out in other places when it was discovered on one of the most famous "cases" that the killer was bacterial encephalitis) some of them were hard to ignore as inclusion bodies were ultimately found.

An inexperienced vet watches a snake rapidly die. The animal won't eat, comes down with a vicious RI that doesn't respond to treatment. In it's last two days it begins corkscrewing and flopping. The vet suspects IBD, the owner does a necropsy targeting the most commonly afflicted IBD tissues and boom - IBD is the culprit.

What my vet is saying that she is seeing cases where the above occurs, but the killer is OPMV and the animal is coincidentally an asymptomatic IBD carrier. A less experienced vet never considers OPMV and never looks for it.

It's something to think about.

You make a very good point.

No vet should make a diagnoses of any kind without asking what symptoms it had, what it's recent behavior was like, or at least running some tests.

That to me is like a doctor diagnosing me with e.coli because I have diarrhea, and not asking me about the 2 pounds of chocolate covered raisins I ate yesterday.

I certainly appreciate this information. I hope against hope I'll never have to deal with a serious condition like one of these, but now I know not to jump to conclusions and have the animal tested for many different things and not just IBD.

I will be sharing this information with my own reptile vet, and encouraging her to look into it on her own.

Gale