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5 Out Of 7 Pigs Have Middle Ear Infections? What?

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derium

derium

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A few weeks ago I lost a piggie to a middle ear infection after a several month battle. I of course freaked out and set an appointment to get my remaining 6 piggies X-rays. I'm SO GLAD I decided to spend the $1,500 on it. Because we just got the results that 4 out of the 6 have middle ear infections. The weirdest part is I've been fighting an on and off again middle ear infection since last summer (around the time the pig we lost got one).

From what my doctor said (and places like the Mayo Clinic) middle ear infections are not contagious... Does ANYONE had ANY clue WTH is happening? Even if my ear infection has nothing to do with it, I don't see how this is possible. Two of the piggies are the two females I have, who are in a cage of their own, so the odds of them getting it from a male pig has to be super low.

Ugh, this is bad news. Seriously terrible news. Inner ear infections in pigs is a tough fight.
 
derium said:
A few weeks ago I lost a piggie to a middle ear infection after a several month battle. I of course freaked out and set an appointment to get my remaining 6 piggies X-rays. I'm SO GLAD I decided to spend the $1,500 on it. Because we just got the results that 4 out of the 6 have middle ear infections. The weirdest part is I've been fighting an on and off again middle ear infection since last summer (around the time the pig we lost got one).

From what my doctor said (and places like the Mayo Clinic) middle ear infections are not contagious... Does ANYONE had ANY clue WTH is happening? Even if my ear infection has nothing to do with it, I don't see how this is possible. Two of the piggies are the two females I have, who are in a cage of their own, so the odds of them getting it from a male pig has to be super low.

Ugh, this is bad news. Seriously terrible news. Inner ear infections in pigs is a tough fight.
Click to expand...

I am very sorry; that is very unusual indeed! Do you have A/C in the room that could cause strong cold airflows?

I am tagging @Abi_nurse and @helen105281 for you.
 
Abi is probably better placed to answer than me. Has the vet said the name of the infection and what antibiotics are being used to treat it? E-Cuniculli can be contagious, so I am wondering if it could be that maybe?
 
We closed off the vent in their room when we made their cages a long time ago, they have their own bedroom for their cage. In this picture you can see the vent in the bottom right corner of the picture by the food bag. The piggie that's alone (he has aggression issues) is closest to it, but he doesn't have an infection. The only thing that has been out of the ordinary in the room is we had a fruit fly (not sure, but small flies) issue that came out of nowhere, but we killed them off with fly strips. This was right before winter.

here's the picture, linking to my facebook post yesterday since I don't have a URL to it other than this:
 
We are waiting to hear back from the place that did the culture on my pig that passed, as of right nopw I do not know what the results were, they didn't share them with us when he was being treated, the concern at that time was "okay good, now do something about it!". =/
 
Hello there,

Sorry to hear that your little ones are not well. Are all 5 actually showing symptoms at all? The reason I ask is usually we only X-ray piggie that are showing symptoms and even then it's just a case of looking at the density of the bullae (middle ear), if they show no symptoms then I would be questioning if they definately have an infection.

Inner ear infections often track up from the respiratory tract and cause the issues but it can sometimes be down to infections on the outside of the ear too (but less common). Animals with middle ear issues have balance and coordination problems, head tilts and eyes flicking (nystagmus).

Inner ear infections are a pain but if your culturing your passed piggie then you should get an idea of what antibiotics will be best and just ensure you have a long course of them.

Hope this helps a bit.

x
 
The reason we did the X-rays is because I requested it. I'm the type of person who will throw money at things like this just to rule things out. After the months of Hell that Nilla (my piggiy who didn't make it) went through, I wanted to rule out any issues with my other pigs. The reports that I have (I can scan them in if reading them helps) say there's mild to moderate infection in the pigs. Each pig has a different degree, one of the reports said one of them is bad enough to recommend a CT scan. I would write it off as a possible radiologist misreading the scans because perhaps they are not familiar with piggies. But since not all of them were reported as having an infection, that makes me think there is something going on.

As for any symptoms, there are none. With Nilla, the only way we caught it was when his eye started to deflate, we seeked treatment then, but they thought it was an eye infection (the eye ended up getting an ulcer), it wasn't until he got a headtilt and have troubles eating did they then do an X-ray and found a really bad infection. But by then it was too late. we threw everything we had at treating it, including ear scraps since he wasn't healthy enough for a full on surgery. He hung on for many months of being hand fed and kept getting worse, no matter how intense of a treatment we did. So my concern is once one of these little guys do show a symptom, it will simply be too late. That's why I'm freaking out so much. That and there MUST be a variable going on here. Something is causing this as a widespread issue, I'm worried just treating them and not the environment as well will not rid us of this.

Sorry for the assault of words, this is just very stressful and scary. So many innocent lives are hanging in the balance.
 
No need to be sorry at all.

In which case I would wait for the culture and then get them all on appropriate antibiotics. With so many having it, I would probably be likely to assume that all have underlying respiratory problems. This is extremely common in Guinea pigs so don't worry. I would potentially be inclined to treat them all if your in anyway concerned at all and then just give their room a good disinfection and clean down, more as piece of mind than anything. I doubt this is anything you've done. By treating them all you will hopefully resolve any residual infection within the group. The actual culture from your passed piggie will also help as finding out what the pathogen is can also give clues on what it could be from. Where did you get them from? Often a lot of pet shop bought piggies can already be infected with things like bordatella or pasturella due to poor breeding conditions and live with underlying respiratory issues (it's no clinical signs) for their whole lives until they become old or unwell.

x
 
Three of them were rescues, two of those were literally dumped outside in a cardboard box in the winter. The others did come from pet stores. The only healthy (as in not a single issue, even bone structure) one came from a pet store. No word back from my vets yet, so it's a waiting game right now... But it's scary because I know the longer we wait for them to figure things out, the harder it is to treat.

Thankfully the piggie with heart failure has the mildest case going on. My vets refuse to sedate him at all, so that's so worrisome if they need to CT scan him, or even meds to upset his system more.

I'll gladly scrub down their room, I'll move them to a different bedroom and completely rebuild their cages, all fresh bedding and even brand new cage itself. I know piggies are really sensitive to everything. Any idea what I could use to clean the room with? I want to make sure it's sterile, but not have any residue left over to upset them.

thank you!
 
here's an email I just got from my vet, this is scary... *sigh*



Kevin & Tabatha,

I know Dr. Marietti gave you copies of the xray reports and discussed some of the findings. She fell ill again tonight, so I thought I would give you an update as to where we stand with our research into this situation.

Just to recap - all of the guinea pigs radiographed had signs of middle ear disease to some extent, with the exception of Chewy. Chestnut's heart disease appears to be stable. Thing 1 and Thing 2 still have open pelvises, so it should be safe to breed them before they reach 6 months old.

I contacted a couple of small mammal veterinary specialists and shared with them Nilla's story and the current situation with the guinea pig herd. In their experience, they feel that nearly 50% of all guinea pigs have asymptomatic middle ear disease. From the studies that we could find, it's usually due to a small handful of bacteria that have a unique ability to ascend from the mouth up the eustachian tube that connects the mouth to the middle ear cavity, and then develop into a chronic low-grade infection. These bacteria often times initially manifest as an upper respiratory tract infection, and then spreads elsewhere. This helps to explain why so many of the guinea pigs are affected.

These bacteria are unlikely to be contagious to dogs or cats, so there is no point in preventively x-raying their skulls to look for middle ear disease.

Here's the bad news. Both of the specialists feel that oral antibiotics are not going to fix this situation. They feel that each guinea pig needs either a.) a CT scan of the head to determine the extent of the disease and/or b.) surgery to open up the middle ear or scoping the ear like Nilla had performed. Once the infection has set up shop in the middle ear, it's difficult to clear the infection because the pus just sits there until it is physically removed. The antibiotics may temporarily reduce the bacterial population in the middle ear, but the infection continues to return until the ear cavity is flushed out.

Long story short - I think it's time to set up an appointment with Dr. Riggs to discuss treatment for all of the piggies. Unfortunately, we do not have ability to scope their tiny little ears. While we could pursue surgical means of exploring the middle ear canal, it is a very high risk procedure with lots of complications. This is not a procedure that I or Dr. Marietti would be willing to perform.

I know this is terrible news, I wish the situation were different. Since there is a high likelihood that this could be contagious from pig to pig, I would be very reluctant to introduce any new guinea pigs into the family as there are no known preventive measures that we could reliably implement.

Please feel free to write with any additional questions or concerns.
 
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