Getting a culture to determine best antibiotic for RI

I keep hearing about this but I haven't been able to find more information. What exactly would a vet look for in the culture? The bacteria itself or leukocytes or what? And would the culture have to come directly from the lung, or would a sample of mucus from the mouth be sufficient?

I'd be interested to know some more about this.

Hopefully Skiploader will chime in. He knows more about this stuff than most Vets do.

Until the smart people arrive I'll throw in my limited understanding.

They can culture the bacteria ( or fungus or virus or whatever else is causing the RI ) from a swab of the mouth or a lungwash.

They spread the swab on the agar gel and apply a range of possible treatments.

Then they incubate it and see which treatment killed or retarded the growth the most.

This is then the one they prescribe to replace the broad spectrum that they give just after taking the swab.


dr del

Thanks for the info! I spoke with our vet today and we decided to do a culture; the vet swabbed the trachea as well as the roof of her mouth. The ball python in question has a history of respiratory issues, so hopefully this will take care of the problem once and for all. :)

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Originally Posted by Crazy4Herps

Thanks for the info! I spoke with our vet today and we decided to do a culture; the vet swabbed the trachea as well as the roof of her mouth. The ball python in question has a history of respiratory issues, so hopefully this will take care of the problem once and for all. :)

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Yep, they will often swab the trachea.

They will also perform a trans-tracheal wash in which a catheter (attached to a syringe filled with saline solution) is inserted into the trachea and the head is held slightly elevated. The vet then injects the saline into the trachea via the catheter. the volume of saline is usually 0.5 to 1% of the body weight of the snake.

The vet will then lower the head of the snake and the fluid is re-aspirated. The bacterial culture is then done on the fluid.

Many moons ago when I used to deal in larger numbers of animals (many imported) I used to collect tracheal fluids myself as part of the QT process, as many snakes came in heavily stressed, parasitized and suffering from the combined effects on the immune system. Our vet was cool enough to take the labelled fluid samples and test them for me.

The procedure is easy to perform if you have a second set of hands............