BILLINGS GAZETTE (Montana) 24 May 03 Abscesses need special treatment from veterinarians (Ed Jorden, Pet Vet)
Dear Dr. Jorden: My iguana has had a lump on his jaw for some time. It hangs down next to his teeth and is slowly getting larger.
He seems to eat just fine, but it is worrying me because of its size. Is it a tumor?
Swellings by the jaw are usually abscesses rather than tumors, but tumors can occur anywhere. A tooth could be infected and cause the abscess or a sharp object could have jabbed the area and started an abscess.
Abscesses in reptiles are slow to grow in size and are quite different from the abscesses that dogs and cats get.
Mammals have pus that is watery, and the body tends to push the pus outward until the skin breaks open and the pus drains out of the body. The infection causes the dog or cat to have a very high fever. Once the abscess breaks open, the fever drops, and the healing begins.
Reptiles are totally different with their abscesses.
Reptile pus is thick and solid like cottage cheese. Reptiles do not respond by getting a fever. Since they are cold-blooded, they do not have the ability to create a fever. This is a disadvantage because the fever helps the body kill the bacteria.
Instead of the fever, the reptile responds by building a wall of scar tissue around the infection. This prevents the rest of the body from being affected.
Therefore, when an iguana has an abscess, it does not make the pet very ill, but sits there and festers over a long period.
When the abscess is on the jaw, it is important to have it treated because the infection slowly affects the bone. Over time, the bone deteriorates, and the jaw breaks.
Treatment involves anesthetizing the iguana and opening the abscess. The pus must be scraped out and the dead, infected tissue around the lining of the abscess removed as well, The abscess is usually left open to some degree to allow for antibiotics to be applied directly into the abscess.
Healing time on reptiles is forever. It may take two months for the wound to close up. Once closed, they rarely return.
Reptile medicine and surgery has progressed tremendously since I first became a veterinarian.
In the dark ages (when I was younger), the way we anesthetized a reptile was to put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. The cold temperature dropped the reptile's body temperature until the animal could not respond. If we did surgery quickly enough, we would have a patient that did not move and did not even bleed much.
It was very much NOT a good way to do surgery.
As the animal warmed up, bleeding would start that we did not know about during surgery. Now, we had to try to stop it with the animal awake.
The refrigerator anesthesia made the animal immobile but did nothing to stop the pain of surgery. The reptile didn't act as if it was in pain because it could not respond to the pain. I am sure the pain was less because of the cold stupor he was in, but pain was not absent.
Back then, it was the only way we knew to do it. Now, we use the best and most modern anesthetics on reptiles, and they enjoy the same pain-free surgery that all other animals and even humans do.
The best part of the refrigerator anesthesia was in trying to sneak the snake or lizard into the refrigerator without someone on the staff knowing it. Sending that person after something in the refrigerator was always fun.
Even if you liked reptiles, the sudden appearance of a 3-foot long iguana curled up inside the refrigerator would be startling, to put it mildly.
The thing you quickly learned at work was any time a bunch of people gathered to watch you open the refrigerator, DON'T OPEN THE REFRIGERATOR!
Abscesses need special treatment from veterinarians