4th Bladder Stone Operation

[cat0364]

Hi
My Piggie Marvin is having his 4th Bladder Stone Operation today. I wondered if anyone else has had a Piggie who has had a lot of Bladder Stone Operations. He seems to keep getting them every 6 months. Have tried changing his diet etc but they keep on coming back. I pray that he gets through todays operation as he is very much loved. Any tips or ideas on how to prevent them. He is now 5 years old and has had the stones since the age of 3.

 

[Wiebke]

Hi
My Piggie Marvin is having his 4th Bladder Stone Operation today. I wondered if anyone else has had a Piggie who has had a lot of Bladder Stone Operations. He seems to keep getting them every 6 months. Have tried changing his diet etc but they keep on coming back. I pray that he gets through todays operation as he is very much loved. Any tips or ideas on how to prevent them. He is now 5 years old and has had the stones since the age of 3.

Hi and welcome!

I am very sorry! Calcium absorption is a complicated and not well researched area in guinea pigs. Depending on what is going wrong and how great a genetic disposition your piggy has, there is only so much you can do.

My Cariad's calcium absorption went suddenly wrong and she developed a major stone in a matter of weeks. After that, she needed a bladder flush by an experienced (if done inexpertly, it can kill if it backs up into the kidneys) every 10 weeks for while as sludge kept building up in her bladder. Eventually I could stretch that to longer intervals, but as much as I did fiddle around with the diet, it never went away completely until she became to frail for that. She was only a tiny piggy.

What you can do for Marvin:
- filter your water. It is not just the calcium, but also the minerals in the water that can collect in the bladder. It can contribute to slowing down the build-up.
- try to encourage your boy to drink as much water as he will take from a syringe in a session once daily. Don't force any water down him if he doesn't want to take it and make sure that he has swallowed the first 0.5 ml (i.e. one mouthful) before you offer more, but it can help him make a bigger pee that flushes the bladder out a bit more. Many bladder piggies are bad drinkers, which contributes to calcium, bacteria and minerals building up in the bladder.
- switch to low calcium pellets, like bunny (5 pellets a day; they are bigger) or feed as little high calcium pellets as possible.
Bunny GuineaPigDream BASIC | Free P&P on orders £29+ at zooplus!
- Stay off any high calcium veg, except a ca. 1 inch strip of spring greens daily for magnesium (which unfortunately only occurs in high calcium veg). Spring greens are the best for the job. You may want to keep to a restricted daily diet of 1 slice of cucumber, 1 chunk of celery, 1 French bean, 1 slice of pepper of any colour, 1 sprig of coriander and 1 strip of spring greens and see whether that helps.
- give vegetarian/vegan glucosamine or a glucosamine-based food supplement like cystease or cystophan to support the natural glucosamine coating of the bladder walls; the irritation from stones can be hard on them.
Some people also swear by syringing the viscous water you have boiled pearl barley in to help support the bladder.

Sadly, alternative bladder stone supplements that have been recommended at some point or other have not stood the test of time.

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Low Calcium Diet For Bladder Piggies
Tips For Post-operative Care

 

[TAN]

My piggy Bumble has had 4 bladder stone ops and is on several meds to hopefully stop this happening again - he is on a human medicine called moduretic which helps to wee out excess calcium - and potassium citrate to get the right acid / alkali level in his urine - the low calcium diet that Wiebke has mentioned - a low calcium high fibre and high vit c guinea pig food that my specialist guinea pig vet feeds to her guinea pigs from vet uk online vetcare multimodal - and is now also on a homoeopathic supplement that she has in the past used on a baby tortoise that she had to operate on 3 times for bladder stones - (which didn't make any more stones after being put on the homoeopathic tablets ) my vet would be happy to email your vet the instructions on how to make up the moduretic if you wanted to try it -Bumble is on 0.4mls twice a day and 0.15 mls potassium citrate twice a day and 1 tablet of calcabonica corea twice a day - all the meds are cheap - costs about £10 for 6 weeks supply of moduretic and a few pounds for the potassium citrate and the calcorea carbonica is £5.95 from Holland and Barratt - my vet is Rachel Mowbray at vale vets in Dursley [email protected] 01453 542092 - good luck.

 

[Freela]

I'm really sorry he's had to go through so much! One of my pigs has just had conservative treatment for her bladder stone... the surgery where I live is not performed very often and thus is extremely expensive and even specialty vets have limited experience performing it, making it riskier. When Sundae was diagnosed, we decided that we would treat her with prophylactic antibiotics and observe her for quality of life issues. Fortunately she has never seemed to have any discomfort associated with the stone and her only symptom is recurrent UTIs, which are largely controlled with the suppressive antibiotic dose (we up the dose if an infection does flare- we can tell when one has because she will leak urine or have a wet bottom and sometimes passes visible blood.) She is now 6 and was diagnosed close to 3, so she has lived a normal life expectancy with conservative treatment and is still happy and active (though she now has cataracts which slow her down more than her bladder ever did!)

 

[cat0364]

I'm really sorry he's had to go through so much! One of my pigs has just had conservative treatment for her bladder stone... the surgery where I live is not performed very often and thus is extremely expensive and even specialty vets have limited experience performing it, making it riskier. When Sundae was diagnosed, we decided that we would treat her with prophylactic antibiotics and observe her for quality of life issues. Fortunately she has never seemed to have any discomfort associated with the stone and her only symptom is recurrent UTIs, which are largely controlled with the suppressive antibiotic dose (we up the dose if an infection does flare- we can tell when one has because she will leak urine or have a wet bottom and sometimes passes visible blood.) She is now 6 and was diagnosed close to 3, so she has lived a normal life expectancy with conservative treatment and is still happy and active (though she now has cataracts which slow her down more than her bladder ever did!)[/

 

[cat0364]

Thanks for the information he is doing really well although he did have to have more antibiotics as he was weeing blood which was probably a water infection. He is a little fighter and keeps bouncing back. We are lucky to have a very good vet surgery where they treat a lot of Guinea pigs. Glad you little lady is doing ok and thank you again.