Help from anyone that has treated bad scale rot (photos included)

I've heard about not using peroxide from having piercings. What about a saline solution?

I hope these threads from goldenburm might give you hope and show you the amazing progression some of these sad cases can make. I think I found most of them but you might want to check out his threads about this particularily bad case of belly rot he saved last year.

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=28174

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=28699

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=29365

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=32553

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=32760

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=34008

He subsequently named her Phoenix and she seemed to heal into a beautiful healthy snake.

Saline is fine for flushing wounds out, but it won't clean or disinfect. I use it to flush out abscesses(use chlorhexidine too for this) or to flush out eye debris.

I do like hydrotherapy though, but I don't know if it would apply well to snakes. It would help bring new tissue growth and keep the circulation going, but I doubt they would be still for it, like horses and other animals will.

Ah I see... I wonder if the stuff I use would work. It's called h20cean, it's a spray -- I'm sure some of you guys have used it, if you have piercings -- basically purified ocean water, which uses lysozome to disinfect.

Lysosomes are organisms that break down matter(Lyse= to break down), such as the crud that accumulates on healing ears. I believe they can eat bacteria too, but I've slept since that class. Plain salt water from your kitchen would do the exact same thing :)

"The active ingredient in H2Ocean is Lysozyme which helps kill over 650 different types of bacteria, diseases, viruses and fungi. Lysozyme exists in our bodily fluids naturally to protect us from airborne bacteria."

Was just curious, because I've used it on my puppies small infection around her incision site when she got fixed, and on cuts and burns from being clumsy :)

Just so its not coming from just one person, everything becky has said about hydrogen peroxide is the truth, I worked for a vet for several years and while peroxide should be used in a few situations we only used it at the point where we needed to start over completely on a healing process and would also discourage even a mix for what you are trying to accomplish with this healing process.

Ditto on not using peroxide. It's a dangerous myth. Peroxide kills living cells....all kinds, including the snake's. We -never- use it on open wounds, at any of the vet hospitals I've worked at. The only thing we use it for is cleaning bloodstains out of fabric, since it so effectively destroys the cells.

http://www.emedmag.com/html/pre/err/0804.asp
The only irrigating solution that has been shown to be effective and relatively innocuous is normal saline. Almost any other foreign substance that is placed in a wound can delay healing and damage granulating wounds. This includes undiluted iodophor solutions. As a general rule, if the substance cannot be used in the eye, it should not be introduced into wounds.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...&dopt=Abstract
Hydrogen peroxide must not be applied to burns that are healing spontaneously.

out of curiosity.... once the bp is healed, is it going back to the family or are you keeping it?

I've seen similar vet stories. It sounds like you need to be really careful when finding a vet for a snake. I had guessed that most of them are used to treating mammals. But, it appears that you can't depend on them to refer you to a specialist.