Thursday, April 13, 2017

Update on Ruffin.


Since coming home from the animal hospital Ruff has been dealing with a recurrence of deep pyoderma like he had once before 8 years ago. This time the Vet started him on a long term regimen of 3000mg of Cephalexin (2 x 500mg three times a day) for 8 weeks but when it showed no sign of improvement he sent some cultures out to a lab for testing and found Ruff's infection was resistant to the Cephalexin so now Ruff is taking two new antibiotics 3000mg of Amoxicillin (3 x 500mg twice a day) and 1600mg of Sulfamethoxazole-TMP (1 x 800mg twice a day) I got the prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy instead of at the Vets office to save some money.

The new antibiotic does appear to be helping. The dried up pus scabs have broken loose and I am bathing his head with Dial antibiotic hand soap. I am surprised at the progress because the available info I found said Amoxicillin would be ineffective.
Amoxicillin, penicillin, and tetracyline are inappropriate choices for treating superficial or deep pyodermas because they are ineffective in 90% of these cases.
The antibiotic of choice has always been Cephalexin yet the cultures our Vet sent out to the lab said the current strain of bacterial infection that Ruff had was resistant to this drug. The lab report recommended a few of the drugs most responsive to treatment and the Amoxicillin was the most affordable on the list.

My initial research 8 years ago was due to an outbreak of Deep Pyoderma that the Vet was unable to control. Back then the Vet would prescribe a moderate dose of Cephalexin for 10 days which would clear it up but then two weeks later Ruff came down with another much larger infection. I found a published paper ( https://actavet.vfu.cz/76/3/0469/ )   in the Journal of the University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Brno, Czech Republic  "Therapy of Canine Deep Pyoderma with Cephalexins and Immunomodulators" that described in detail an 11-week long treatment of high doses of Cephalexin. I showed it to my Vet and he wrote out a prescription for 3 months supply and I filled it at WalMart. It did the job and Ruff never had a repeat until after he had the radiation treatment.
There is still no signs of improvement in Ruff's eyesight but he learned to walk slowly around the house to avoid bumping into the furniture. He has always managed to find his way into the kitchen at dinner time when he hears me opening up the cans of dog food.

 

4 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but some pharmacies will give you a discount on prescription medications that aren't covered by insurance if you have AAA. When my boy had bone cancer, I needed to go to CVS to fill his scripts and one of the kind technicians asked if I had AAA; I did and it cut the amount I needed to pay out of pocket substantially.

    Sending thoughts and prayers your way.

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    1. Your info about CVS and AAA is very useful. One of side benefits of having a good relationship with your local pharmacy is that they always look out for you, often without being asked. For many years the one I go to has always received one of my Rottweiler Christmas cards and we (me and my dogs) are on a first name basis. Check out my post from Tuesday, February 14, 2017, Ruff has made friends everywhere he goes. The two recent prescriptions were already discounted when I picked them up.

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  2. You don't even need AAA. I am a pharmacy technician and most pharmacies have assorted discount cards they can try. Goodrx works well for some drugs. Google it and it will give you a price based on the pharmacy name.

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  3. You don't even need to be a AAA member. I am a pharmacy technician for Cvs and most pharmacies have discount cards that they can apply for you, but often they will not try to use them and less you ask them if they have discount cards. You can also Google goodrx.com and the site will give you prices based on the pharmacy that you use. We have many customers who use goodrx for savings.

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