Quote Originally Posted by chrisv View Post
I, for one, am eager to hear how this works out and with the OP luck with the treatment.

Last month I had a BP in at the UNC school of veterinary medicine's exotics clinic for a RI. The vet told me that there are many cases when a trachea wash and culture is not practical and that he is not at all opposed to exploratory treatment with broad spectrum antibiotics. He explained that with 30 days of this treatment the majority of RIs will resolve.

People might consider dismounting their high horses.
And for many cases it works, though Baytril isn't exactly broad spectrum any more. If the OP were going with Baytril + Fortaz or Baytril + Naxcel to target both gram-pos and gram-neg bacteria then I could see the point.

The OP also described this as a "lingering RI", and if the snake has had Baytril treatments for it in the recent past, the bacteria that are left are very likely resistant. Or, in a worse scenario, the underlying cause may be viral and not bacterial; several of the PMV's can present as on-again off-again RI's before the snake eventually succumbs to the disease.