How to diagnose and treat oral ulcer in cats?

Oral ulcer is inflammation of oral mucosa, which is characterized by salivation, anorexia and flushing and swelling of oral mucosa. Generally limited, sometimes it will spread to the tongue, gums, buccal mucosa and other places, becoming diffuse inflammation. There are many reasons for oral ulcer, including physical factors, chemical factors, microbial factors and other diseases. The disease is more common in dogs and cats, and cats are more prone to disease. Because cats like to eat fish, eating fish is easy to sting their mouths, and it is easy to induce oral inflammation without timely treatment. At first, the symptoms were loss of appetite and chewing disorder, and then developed into mucosal swelling, fever and pain, salivation, bad breath, mucosal ulceration and necrosis, elevated body temperature and weak constitution. Recently, a cat's oral ulcer is very serious, and its mucosa is still necrotic to varying degrees. The situation of coming to the hospital for treatment is as follows, hoping to bring help to everyone.

I. Case introduction

Domestic cat, 8 years old, 2.6kg, not immunized. It ate fish three days ago and found no foreign bodies such as fishbones. Since then, it has been anorexia and drinking water, but its mouth stinks and drools a lot. Upon examination, there are many ulcer foci in the mouth and tongue (as shown in figure 1), large area ulcer in the gums (as shown in figure 2) and ulcer necrosis in the lower lip corner (as shown in figure 3). The cat is depressed, weak in limbs and weak in barking.

Figure 1 Multiple ulcers on the tongue (as shown by arrows).

Fig. 2 A large area of gingival ulcer (as shown by the black arrow) and sublingual gland swelling (as shown by the red arrow).

Fig. 3 Large area ulcer and necrosis of lower lip angle.

Second, diagnosis and treatment.

After clinical diagnosis, there are many localized ulcer foci on the cat's tongue surface, a large gray-yellow false membrane on the oral mucosa, bad breath and salivation. According to the description of the owner, it was diagnosed as ulcerative necrotizing stomatitis.

The treatment principle of this disease is to eliminate the cause and strengthen nursing. First, clean your mouth, add ceftiofur and tinidazole to normal saline, dip a cotton swab into normal saline to clean your mouth, and rinse your mouth once a day. Because cats can't eat, they should be given intravenous infusion, supplemented with glucose, amino acids and other preparations for maintenance treatment, injected with ceftiofur every day for seven days, and taken orally with metronidazole tablets. Metronidazole and tinidazole belong to nitroimidazole, which are a group of antibacterial drugs with strong anti-anaerobic effect and can be used to prevent and treat systemic and local infections caused by anaerobic bacteria. At the same time, vitamin B deficiency can also cause stomatitis and cheilitis, so daily subcutaneous injection and oral vitamin B complex can play a certain auxiliary therapeutic role. After seven days of treatment, the cat's condition has improved, salivation has decreased obviously, and it can eat proper liquid food.

Local lesions can also be washed with 0. 1% potassium permanganate or 2%-3% boric acid solution twice a day. When there are too many oral secretions, you can also choose 3% hydrogen peroxide solution or 1% alum solution to rinse, and apply 5% iodine glycerin to the surface of oral ulcer. For ulcers that cannot be cured for a long time, 5%- 10% silver nitrate solution can be applied for corrosion to promote its healing. In order to enhance mucosal resistance, vitamin A can be used. Give clean drinking water every day, supplement enough B vitamins, and feed nutritious liquid foods such as milk and fish soup to reduce the irritation to the oral mucosa.

Third, diagnosis and treatment experience

Stomatitis can be divided into ulcerative stomatitis, necrotizing stomatitis, fungal stomatitis and vesicular stomatitis according to its inflammatory properties.

1. Ulcerative stomatitis: often complicated or secondary to systemic diseases. In the initial stage, it secretes transparent saliva. With the development of the disease, sticky brown or bloody saliva is secreted, and it has an unpleasant smell. The above secretions are attached to the nose and mouth and around the forelimbs.

2. Necrotizing stomatitis: The ulcer surface is covered with a dirty gray-yellow oily pseudomembrane in addition to a large number of necrotic tissues in the mucosa.

Mycotic stomatitis: it is a special type of ulcerative stomatitis, which is characterized by white or gray spots on the oral mucosa slightly higher than the surrounding tissues, flushing around the focus, and a white tough envelope on the surface. It often occurs in dogs and cats with a history of long-term or large-dose use of broad-spectrum antibiotics.

3, vesicular stomatitis: mostly accompanied by systemic diseases, such as canine distemper, malnutrition and so on. Small blisters appeared in the oral mucosa and gradually developed into bright red ulcer surface with clear boundary. When cats suffer from this disease, there are obvious lesions in the mouth.

Fourth, preventive measures.

To prevent this disease, we should take good care of cats at ordinary times, and it is best to feed special cat food to prevent vitamin deficiency caused by malnutrition. And pay attention to remove foreign bodies from cat food to avoid mucosal damage caused by eating by mistake. Observe the cat's daily activities and treat it in time if found.