Hi All, I noticed before the weekend that one of my guinea pigs, Blackjack, had started to develop a lump under his jaw. It came on very quickly, I usually stroke him under his chin so I could tell straight away something wasn't right, a few hours later it was much bigger and over the weekend it seemed to grow more. Monday morning I managed to get an appointment for him at my local exotic vets. They took a look and told me that it was a dental abscess and because of the position, squarely under the middle of the jaw its likely to be from one of his lower incisors.
The vet told me dental abscesses can be tricky to manage and recommended doing some imaging to identify which tooth is causing it and to have surgery to marsupialise the abscess and also to extract all four incisors to prevent the abscess returning.
I was quite shocked that the vet recommended extracting all four incisors but he assured me that Blackjack would still be able to eat using his molars. I’m just after some advice on whether this seems like the best way forward? I’ve had a read through other threads posted here about similar issues and it doesn’t seem like the norm to have all four incisors extracted so I’m concerned this might be a little extreme?
*To give some more background Blackjack will be 5 years old in June, he’s still eating and behaving normally since the abscess first appeared. Around 6 weeks ago he went to the vets for a dental because he had been off his food and when they examined him they saw that there was a slant in one of his lower incisors so he had a dental operation to bring all the teeth back into alignment. He was much better after the surgery, eating and behaving as normal, he’s usually a very happy chappy. This abscess has been the only issue since, almost 6 weeks after his op.
Vets also recommended doing CT to be sure which tooth was causing the issue but I opted for an X-ray since it was slightly cheaper than the very expensive CT, and vet seems very sure its related to one of the lower incisors.
The vet told me dental abscesses can be tricky to manage and recommended doing some imaging to identify which tooth is causing it and to have surgery to marsupialise the abscess and also to extract all four incisors to prevent the abscess returning.
I was quite shocked that the vet recommended extracting all four incisors but he assured me that Blackjack would still be able to eat using his molars. I’m just after some advice on whether this seems like the best way forward? I’ve had a read through other threads posted here about similar issues and it doesn’t seem like the norm to have all four incisors extracted so I’m concerned this might be a little extreme?
*To give some more background Blackjack will be 5 years old in June, he’s still eating and behaving normally since the abscess first appeared. Around 6 weeks ago he went to the vets for a dental because he had been off his food and when they examined him they saw that there was a slant in one of his lower incisors so he had a dental operation to bring all the teeth back into alignment. He was much better after the surgery, eating and behaving as normal, he’s usually a very happy chappy. This abscess has been the only issue since, almost 6 weeks after his op.
Vets also recommended doing CT to be sure which tooth was causing the issue but I opted for an X-ray since it was slightly cheaper than the very expensive CT, and vet seems very sure its related to one of the lower incisors.
