Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Received another '10 rosyboa. This has a swollen mouth and a puss discharge. Ubelieveable luck - all from the same person (mite-infested boa in last post, now this one).

Is there anything I can do before a vet visit? I have the snake in a well-ventilated cages with a nice warm spot near 90 deg and newspaper substrate. I have swabbed the area with peroxide.

Have never seen this with a rosyboa before.
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Mark

Mark,
Hydrogen peroxide is usually not used much as a wound disinfectant anymore as studies have shown it to cause some minor tissue damage and it also appears to slow the healing process somewhat. Diluted Betadine or it’s generics would be easier on the tissue than H2O2 and probably do a better job at disinfection. See the excerpt below that I pulled from a medical site a few years ago for a more detailed explanation:

Everything else you’re doing sounds good before the vet visit. Very unfortunate that you were put in this situation. Good luck with this one,

Kelly

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- Hydrogen peroxide is used less 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.

References

Berglin, E.H., Edlund, M.B., Nyberg, G.K., and Carlsson, J. (1982) Potentiation by L-cysteine of the bactericidal effect of hydrogen peroxide in Escherichia coli. Journal of Bacteriology, 152(1), 81-88 (Oct).

British National Formulary (1996) 13.11.6 Astringents, oxidisers, and dyes: hydrogen peroxide. Joint publication of the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (p. 492).

Higgins, K.R., and Ashry, H.R. (1995) Wound dressings and topical agents. Clin Podiatr Med Surg, 12(1), 31-40 (Jan).

O'Toole, E.A., Goel, M., and Woodley, D.T. (1996) Hydrogen peroxide inhibits human keratinocyte migration. Dermatol Surg, 22(6), 525-529 (Jun).

Potter, P.A. and Perry, A.G. (1993) Fundamentals of nursing: concepts, process & practice (3rd edition). St. Louis: Mosby-Year Book, Inc (p. 1666).

Tatnall, F.M., Leigh, I.M., and Gibson, J.R. (1990) Comparative study of antiseptic toxicity on basal keratinocytes, transformed human keratinocytes and fibroblasts. Skin Pharmacology, 3(3), 157-163.

Tatnall, F.M., Leigh, I.M., and Gibson, J.R. (1991) Assay of antiseptic agents in cell culture: conditions affecting cytotoxicity. Journal of Hospital Infections, 17(4), 287-296 (Apr).

Thomas, S. (1990a) Wound cleansing agents. In Wound Management Dressings. The Pharmaceutical Press (Chapter 11, p. 76).

Appreciate your input Kelly once again.

BTW, I performed another mite treatment. This time, I used the mite killer outside the enclosure and on the floor around it. I took the snake out and sprayed the inside of the enclosure, wiped it off, then washed it out with soap and water before putting the snake back in just to make sure.

Much better. Snake is fine. I know I may need another week or two to tell, but I doubt I will see mites again. And the snake has no visible symptoms of toxicity.
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Mark

I hope you got your money back.
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Steve Perry
North Idaho.

Turns out when I went over to pick another in person, his rosies were in deli cups with water containers and damp aspen substrate. The room itself was already somewhat humid. Poor rosies were out of their element.

No wonder. Every rosy I checked in those cups had the same symptoms. Every one. Apparently I was wrong - this is not mouthrot - the "pus" is mucous. Respiratory infection perhaps. Makes the throat area swollen just under the jaw.

He said his helper, unbeknownst to him, had watered all the deli cup rosies for the last week or more, and that accounted for the problems. He also said they would recover in time when he moves them to dry cages.

He must be speaking some truth, because they were not all that tiny for 2010s in deli cups, so they must have been doing well up to the last month or so.

But yeah, I got my money back. At least the error was found.
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Mark

I think I know what you're talking about with the swollen neck.
I've seen it in rosys with respiratory infection or that haven't had adequate heat, or even some normal ones that just drank water.
Correcting the cause should fix it as long as they're not too bad off.

That is it exactly.
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Mark