Leaking eye and prescription given by vet

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This topic has 2sd replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 3 years ago by LBJ10.

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- 11/19/2021 at 9:12 AM
 Mom of Emma and Lea
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 1 posts
 My Emma has had issue with her right eye leaking for a few weeks now. That is something that happened to her from time to time and would go away after 1 day. I have no idea if it’s also leaking a milky discharge, all I know is I would notice her fur being very crusty around her eye multiple times throughout the day and her eye being swollen and watery. When I touched her fur around her eye when it is still wet, it felt a bit gummy. This doesn’t really seem to bother her, she’s her usual self, full of energy, doing binkies and eating her normal diet. Given it’s been going on for weeks this time, I decided to bring her to the vet to get it checked out.
 
 Unfortunately, due to Covid, it’s a nightmare to try to see a vet right now… I called my usual vet (who’s like the best rabbit vet clinic in my city to go to for 20 years), but they wouldn’t give me an appointment because I haven’t gone for a couple years now (awesome way to reward you for having healthy bunnies and not wanting to go to the vet during a pandemic if I didn’t need to…)
 
 Basically, I had to call 8 vets before I could find one that would see my rabbits in the next few days. So I had no idea how experienced the vet was with rabbits. Because of Covid, I actually had to sit in my car the whole time while the technician brought my Emma to the vet and she was examined without me being there. I got to brief the technician on what is going on outside in the cold while it was raining for like 1 minute… All that to say, the whole experience was surreal and a complete nightmare.
 
 After examining her, the vet came to talk to me and explained he thought this could either be a scratched cornea or a bacterial infection. He even mentioned it could be snuffles. After doing some test with dye, he established it was not a scratched cornea. So he settled on the bacterial infection. I have no clue if they even checked her teeth (my usual vet had noticed that she some spurs and spikes in her cheek teeth, and Emma is not a huge fan of timothy hay, so after that visit a couple years back, I introduced other types of hay like orchard grass, botanical and meadow in her diet which she seems to prefer). The vet said nothing about those spurs, so either it’s fixed now or he didn’t even bother to check her teeth (which I wouldn’t be too surprised because Emma recoils a lot when the vet tries to check her teeth and it makes the task really hard to get done by the vet).
 
 I have no idea if this vet has any experience with rabbits…. He seemed quite young. Although they do take exotic animals at this clinic (so they must have some kind of rabbit experience if they do…)
 
 So, in the end, he prescribed 0.3% ciprofloxacin eye drops (1 drop 3 times a day), 1.0% prednisolone eye drops (1 drop twice a day) and some animal eye lube to put on before I put the drops.
 
 So far, she’s not reacting super well to the eye drops… Before I give it to her, she’s her normal self, in a good mood and eating food, then after I administer it to her, she suddenly becomes lethargic and won’t accept even treats… It takes SEVERAL minutes before she gets back to a more normal state. It made me worried that this medication might not have been the best choice for a rabbit.
 
 I looked it up further and found out that prednisolone is a steroid medication and that’s not really something that should be prescribed to rabbits… They are apparently very sensitive to it and it can even mess up with their immune system. I believe prednisolone is called “Pred forte” in the U.K.? (I’m in Canada and I got prescribed some generic prednisolone.)
 
 All that to say, I understand that people on this forum are not vets, but I wanted to hear other people’s experience. Have you had a vet prescribed this for eye infection? And if so, did you rabbits have an averse reaction to it? Did you stop giving it to your rabbit?
 
 I just don’t know what to do at this point. I want to trust a medically trained professional but I also don’t want to hurt my rabbit and make her condition worst.
 
 Any help or advice would be very much appreciated!
- 11/19/2021 at 9:42 AM
 Bam
 Moderator
 16965 posts
 It could be that the eye drops sting and that’s why your bun acts differently for several minutes. I once got some awful OTC animal eyedrops that I tried on myself before I gave them to my dog. They really stung and gave me blurred vision for many minutes, so I never used them on any animal.
 
 For buns I have only had fucithalmic (fucidic acid eye drops) prescribed for bun eye problems. As you say, corticosteroids are not normally used with rabbits, and my rabbit savvy vet doesn’t prescribe combination drugs (antibiotics plus corticosteroids) for eye infections. If a bun gets a bad case of E Cuniculi, a vet might opt to give 1 dose of injectable corticosteroids, to bring an acute and lifethreatening inflammation down. This can really turn things around, but its a last resort and should be followed up with drugs that are effective against the ec parasite.
 
 Anything you drip into an eye will make its way into the rest of the body. It could be that the vet consider the prednidone dose so minuscule that it wont harm, though.
 
 We are not vets, as you are aware, so we cant tell you what to do.
 
 I’d keep up the ciprofloxacine, because thats what will cure a bacterial infection. You could call and ask the vet for a prescription for meloxicam. Meloxicam is an NSAID (similar to ibuprofen for humans) and it is widely used for inflammations and pain in rabbits.
 
 If the problem returns when you stop the medication, I’d try to have her teeth checked by someone rabbit savvy. A non-rabbit savvy vet will not always detect even bad teeth problem – I have had that happen with a bun who, it turned out, had completely horrible teeth.
- 11/19/2021 at 4:43 PM
 LBJ10
 Moderator
 17026 posts
 I have used steroid eye drops before, but it was for inflammation… not an infection. Steroids should be used with caution in rabbits. However, topical steroids (ointments, eye drops, etc.) are less “bad” than oral steroids. So I would say that it may not have been totally inappropriate to prescribe the eye drops. If the vet felt there was inflammation that needed to be controlled quickly, then the drops may be warranted.
 
 I agree with Bam that the eye drops could sting.
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