[Dailydrool] Phoebe update

[dpmcquade at verizon.net]

When it comes to upper-respiratory infections, I have repeatedly been through them myself, and of course we had Jane's one bout of kennel cough. I have no medical degree, but I did work for a while at a pharmaceutical company and picked up some information about upper-respiratory-infection antibiotics. (And I'm sure other Droolers who do have more medical background can correct me on this if I am wrong anywhere.) The standard treatment for URIs is:

1. A lower-level antibiotic (this probably is not the proper medical term, but I don't know what that would be). Doctors start with this, because if it will kill of whatever is causing an upper respiratory infection, you're set. You don't have to take a powerful antibiotic. This level of antibiotics will kill off a limited range of "bugs" that cause URIs. But if you don't get one that works on the infection you happen to have, it won't do much. I have sometimes had drugs at this level have a mild impact but not get the bug out of my system completely. That probably meant that the bug I had had built up a resistance to the drug, so I would need something more powerful. Or the prescribed medication may just not work on the bug that was in my system.

If that drug doesn't work, you go on to #2.

2. A broad-spectrum antibiotic. This is a drug that covers more bugs that cause infections. Read the patient information sheet you can find online at a site like http://www.webmd.com/drugs/ and you can find out just what a specific BSA will treat effectively. That may not mean a lot, since you probably won't know which of the bugs is in your system, but you will get an idea of what a broad-spectrum drug is like, compared to the more basic antibiotics.

One of the BSAs I took many years ago dealt with both bronchitis and pneumonia. A drug like that, for humans, is great, as long as it treats the bug you happen to have. If you have tripped over the line into pneumonia, while you were on the first, ineffective drug, it should take care of the problem.

With dogs, it's the same thing--think of kennel cough as having bronchitis (though I don't know that it's exactly the same). If the infection moves on to affect the lungs, it becomes pneumonia. So your dog may need a BSA that will deal with both kennel cough and bronchitis, if the first drug has not worked.

What this all means, when your dog is treated, is that your vet may prescribe a less effective medication first. Give it to your dog for a few days (I usually wait about three or four days), and if you are not seeing improvement, go back to your vet with your hound, who may need a broad spectrum antibiotic. If you don't go back to the vet, the doc will assume that the drug is working.

Usually the BSA will work in a few days, but pneumonia can be dangerous, so you don't want to let it take a firm hold on your dog's system, since that will make the recovery more difficult. It's possible you could end up needing a different BSA, if the first didn't work on the bug you or your dog had, but that has never been my experience. Most BSAs cover a pretty broad range of infections. However, in the unlikely event that it does not work, a doctor may be able to test to see what your dog has exactly and what drug will be most effective.

I'm sure you have heard that doctors are more cagey about prescribing antibiotics than they used to be. That's because if they overprescribe the powerful ones, the bugs will build up resistance to those drugs, and the strong drugs will no longer be able to wipe out those bugs. If the bugs build up resistance to the lower level antibiotics, you still have the broad-spectrum ones to throw at them.

So your vet is not wrong in prescribing a drug that may not work. He's actually protecting your dog. And he may also be protecting a dog who has other health issues, such as heart problems. You don't want to use an unnecessarily powerful drug on a weakened system.
 
I hope this helps you understand a bit more about the treatment of kennel cough and related infections. And I hope it wasn't too boring either.
Pam, food slave to the Dashing Bassets