[Dailydrool] TECA

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Our late, great Jane Basset had two TECAs, one when she was about six  
or seven and one when she was about nine or ten. Based on what we  
went through with her, I have a few pieces of advice.

First, this is serious surgery, so don't entrust it to a regular vet.  
Regular vets don't see this sort of thing very often and thus don't  
have as much experience and finesse with it as a specialist who does  
TECAs all the time. Get a veterinary dermatologist or allergist to  
evaluate the situation and do the surgery. Your regular vet can set  
you up with a referral and probably won't take it personally when you  
ask for one. Preferably the surgery should be done at a place that  
has a recovery ward that is staffed around the clock. The surgery  
leaves the dog in an awful lot of pain, and someone should be with  
the dog at all times to ensure its pain medication doesn't wear off.

Second, at this stage don't trust the culture a regular vet does with  
a handheld oticsope and a cotton swab. A dog's ear canal makes a 90- 
degree bend toward the center of the dog's head. As our Jane proved,  
it is very possible to have two different infections caused by two  
different kinds of bacteria going on in the ear canal, one before the  
bend and one after. Vets who are working with otiscopes and cotton  
swabs are only getting views and samples of the bacteria that exists  
in the part of the ear canal that's before the bend. They don't have  
a clue what might be going on beyond the bend. Only a flexible  
endoscope permits a vet to see that far into the canal. In our Jane's  
case, we'd had smears and cultures done and had given Jane  
antibiotics for six months, but only for the bacteria the vet could  
see. As a result, a completely different and undetected infection had  
been allowed to rage beyond the bend. By the time we wised up and  
insisted on a referral to Purdue University's vet school, the  
infection was so bad it had begun to eat through Jane's skull. I can  
only imagine the pain she'd been in for months, and I still feel  
guilty about it.

Third, don't think that a TECA will mean a dog can never get an  
infection in that ear again. Our Jane had to have a second TECA in  
the same ear because bacteria entered her bulla by way of her throat  
and eustachion tube. Her Purdue dermatologist said this sort of thing  
isn't common at all, but it's also not unheard of. So if your dog  
begins to act as if it has an infection in the ear that no longer has  
a hole, tell your specialist immediately.

Finally, get to the root of what's causing the persistent ear  
infections--treat the cause and not just the symptoms. The infections  
may very well be caused by the dog reacting to environmental  
allergens. When a dog's allergic to something, it feels itchy. When  
it scratches its itch with its toenails and tongue, a dog does  
creates tiny openings in the skin through which bacteria enter. After  
our Jane's TECA we had her tested for food and environmental  
allergies. She had no food allergies, but she turned out to be  
allergic to molds, pollens, trees, dust, cats, and feathers. We put  
her on allergy shots and her ear infections stopped. We know it was  
her allergy shots that stopped her ear infections, and not the  
antihistamines and fatty acid supplements she was also on, because we  
grew lax in giving her the shots and her infections returned.

The TECAs were hard on our Jane. She was at Purdue for about a week  
before she was allowed to come home. She had a drain in her ear for  
about four days. She had a long line of stitches down the inside of  
her right ear flap, which was shaved. But she recovered within a  
month and clearly felt so much better that we regretted not having  
gotten her to a specialist much earlier. Persistent ear infections  
that won't clear up are really debilitating to a dog, and can be  
fatal, so it's good to do whatever's necessary to get rid of the  
infection and then make sure more don't happen.

Elizabeth