Studies have shown hydrogen peroxide to cause some minor tissue damage and it also appears to slow the healing process by damaging the cells needed for wound repair. Diluted Betadine or better yet, a 0.05% chlorhexidine diacetate solution would be easier on the tissue than H2O2 and be more effective. Actually, the best topical treatment for stomatitis is a water debridement and then a topical application of Polysporin or Neosporin. Just make sure that the ointment contains at least 10,000 units of polymyxin as this antibiotic has the greatest effect on the gram negative bacteria responsible for these infections. Also, as Brandon stated, do not use the cream form. In the case of this python, the infection may have moved past the point of effective topical treatment, and systemic antibiotics may be required.

See the excerpt below that I pulled from a medical site a few years ago for a more detailed explanation on H2O2 use:


"Hydrogen peroxide is less used now as a debriding agent than in the past. When hydrogen peroxide is applied to a wound it combines with catalase produced in the tissues and decomposes into oxygen and water, producing effervescence (Potter and Perry, 1993). The rationale was that this helps to loosen materials that might hinder wound recovery and enables them to be washed off more readily. Six-percent w/v hydrogen peroxide (known as ' 20 volume' solution) liberates twenty times its own volume of oxygen upon decomposition (Thomas, 1990a), and is generally diluted 1 in 3 for the irrigation of wounds. The release of oxygen also kills some anaerobic bacteria such as the tetanus bacillus or Escherichia coli that might otherwise infect the wound. This anti-microbial action of hydrogen peroxide can be amplified 100-fold by the addition of L-cysteine (Berglin et al, 1982)."

"The problem with hydrogen peroxide and some other traditional debriding agents is that they also damage the healthy cells (keratinocytes and fibroblasts) that are needed for wound healing and inhibit their necessary migration into the damaged area (Tatnall, Leigh, and Gibson, 1990; Tatnall, Leigh, and Gibson, 1991; O'Toole, Goel, and Woodley, 1996). In current practice the emphasis has moved away from the use of cytotoxic materials to those which promote healing, including the use of natural signalling molecules such as platelet-derived growth factor (Higgins and Ashry, 1995). In the British National Formulary (1996) hydrogen peroxide is now listed under "Astringents, oxidisers and dyes", and not as a desloughing agent. The application of hydrogen peroxide has been replaced with the use of a physiological saline wash for removal of necrotic tissue."

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