For diarrhea, generally my regular vets approach is to start with
Flagyl and high-fiber food.
Gloria
On Sep 17, 2006, at 7:07 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
oy vey, diagnosis is invasive, generally, and thus Lucy never has
had a proper one. To actually diagnose, they need to do an
endoscapy, and sometimes they can not definitively diagnose that
way either and so need to biopsy a full section of the intestine,
which means surgery. What I did with Lucy, and what vets will
often do, is tried prednisone to see if she responded favorably to
it. When she did, and also responded favorably to raw food, and she
had no parasites, etc., we concluded it was IBD. What IBD is very
hard to distinguish from, though, is small cell (slow growing)
intestinal lymphoma, which is why I am always worried when Lucy
seems worse.
For a cat who is a recent rescue, though, it could be IBS, which is
stress-related rather than related to stress allergies or
inflammation like IBD. With IBS, if you can keep the stress under
control and calm the cat down, the diarrhea should get better.
I think the first thing I would do with a cat with diarrhea that
could possible be infectious or parasitic in nature is try a week
of flagyl and see if it helps. It can also help with IBD if the IBD
is in the lower (large) intestine. If you can, I would also put him
on raw food or at least EVO, which is a grainless canned and dry
food (grains seem to aggravate IBD a lot). If it does not get
better, I would talk to a vet and get a stool sample analyzed for
other parasites or bacteria, and then think about food allergies. I
would only get the scope or surgical biopsy done as a last resort.
Even if lucy does not get better from what I am doing and might
have lymphoma, I am going to try to convince the internist to just
try the treatment (leukeran, a chemo agent, in addition to the
pred), which they give for both small cell lymphoma and severe IBD,
and see if helps, rather than put her through the stress of the
scope or surgery. Endoscope for stomach or upper intestine is not
so bad-- light anesthesia and then a scope without any cutting-- I
have had this a few times myself. But endoscope for lower
intestine, which is where Lucy's problem is, requires the vet to
give the cat several enemas first and, I think, more anesthesia
(it's actually like a colonoscopy). Plus once they have been on
pred it is harder to differentiate IBD from lymphoma anyway.
Michelle
In a message dated 9/17/2006 7:59:57 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
How is IBD diagnosed? Blood Work? I have a new rescue I am thinking
he might have it but then again he is declawed has litterbox issues
and is scared of his own shadow,
Thanks
Karen
