Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

RE: Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

Marie Kubiak — Sat, 17 Dec 2016 12:01:04 GMT

[quote user="Glenn Hodgson"]

Update in breif.

Domperidone helped a little bit resucing bloat frequency. Not eniugh to make me comfortable that was not in imminemt risk of dieing.

We are 3 weeks into amitriptilline, It is helping alot! 0.1ml Sid of childrens suspension.

[/quote]

Sorry - missed the earlier question about amitriptyline - no I haven't used it but useful to know you have had a positive response!

Marie

RE: Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

Glenn Hodgson — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 19:16:46 GMT

Update in breif.

Domperidone helped a little bit resucing bloat frequency. Not eniugh to make me comfortable that was not in imminemt risk of dieing.

We are 3 weeks into amitriptilline, It is helping alot! 0.1ml Sid of childrens suspension.

RE: Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

Glenn Hodgson — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 16:56:30 GMT

Following the stress of the last 20 minute visit this G.pig had cystitis again. Looked sterile on cytology and resolved in the usual 5 days.

Scan today showed normal ovaries, normal kidneys, normal bladder and alot of gas shadowing.

No improvement at all on metaclop+cisapride+ranitidine+fiberplex+gripe water.

We discussed advanced imaging.

Domperidone is on its way.

Marie. Have you used amitriptyline in Guineas before? This g.pig has had repeated stress induced cystitis and I will revert to it occasionally in cystitic cats when the going gets tough.

Kind regards

RE: Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

Glenn Hodgson — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 10:49:27 GMT

Thank you both for your help. It is really appreciated.

We are going to manage a scan next week. Ga consent for bloods may understandably be a challenge.

I'll follow up here in a week or so for your interest.

RE: Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

Marie Kubiak — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 15:10:50 GMT

Bloat implies a primary gut problem, aerophagia or a chronic pain/stress issue causing cortisol elevation and secondary hypermotility.

If faeces are normal then any gut issue has to fairly high up. Gastric neoplasia, pancreatic disorders and small intestinal pathology are all pretty rate though I have had one rabbit with similar issues diagnosed with mycobacterial enteritis at post-mortem after several years of struggling to control hypomotility and bloat.

Aerophagia should have an obvious external symptom and is usually only seen in advanced respiratory disease so pretty sure both you and the owner would be well aware of this! Not seen any guinea pigs with wind-sucking tendencies either.

Chronic stress/pain is most likely and it becomes a game of hunt the cause. Worth getting the owner to keep a diary of as many details as they can and correlating daily routine/diet etc with level of bloat to pinpoint anything that is acting as a trigger. Most guinea pig owners love this kind of thing and it keeps them feeling like they are involved and there is an ongoing investigation! Dental pain, cystoliths and orthopaedic pain should have been fairly well excluded from the work up done so far but common soft tissue abnormalities (neoplasia, reproductive pathology) and chronic debilitating pathology (cardiac, renal) could be investigated further with ultrasound. If you can find them, measuring adrenals is useful as Cushings-type disease is reported and physiologically it makes sense that GI consequences result but there are often more evident changes too.

If all is normal then you are limited as to where else you can go unless the owner is willing to go for speculative advanced imaging. If it were a cat or dog I'd happily take biopsies of the GIT, this is however best avoided in guinea pigs! Keeping it on a 90% hay diet with small amount of low sugar fresh veg and no pellets/muesli concentrates, transfaunation by feeding a slurry of healthy GP faeces (ideally with caecotrophs included so often involves stress to another animal to get these) may help a little. Bloods would be useful as a broad screen and to assess renal parameters in particular. You have used the usual medical supportive treatments but there is still domperidone to try (0.5mg.kg bid) and this did work better than other drugs in my mycobacterial case.

Marie

RE: Guinea pig Chronic Bloat

Suzanne Kelly — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 23:40:20 GMT

Hi Glenn,

Is she spayed? If not have you checked for cystic ovaries? Chamomile is good for stress and for intestinal function and dandelion will help with urinary function and gut motility. Peppermint is helpful for bloat too. Oxbow do a urinary support tablet suitable for piggies and a good few companies do herbal hay. Burgess do a chamomile hay for pigs, vitakraft do a hay and peppermint. Oxbow have a digestive support tablet too with chamomile and fenugreek. Guinea pigs usually respond well to acupuncture, but if she bloats just by coming to the clinic she may not be a suitable candidate.

Good luck!

Suzanne