Good evening, everybody, and welcome to tonight's webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson, and I have the honour and privilege of chairing this evening's webinar. Little bit of housekeeping for those of you that haven't been with us before, and I apologise to those that have.
But if you have any questions for us, please, just move your mouse over the screen. The little control bar pops up at the bottom. There's a Q&A box.
Just pop all your questions into that, and, we will keep all of those over until the end. And then we will deal with as many as we can. If we don't get them answered, we have asked Emma very nicely if she will answer them on email.
So if we run out of time and we don't get to answer questions, please don't think we're ignoring you. We will get to them. So without further ado, it is my honour and privilege to introduce tonight's speaker.
Dr. Emma Keeble graduated from Bristol University in 1994, working in mixed veterinary practise, wildlife rehabilitation, and exotic pet practise before joining Edinburgh University, Dick Wits Rabbit and exotic animal practise in 1999. She was also a veterinary surgeon at Edinburgh Zoo for 10 years, and Emma gained her RCVS diploma in zoological medicine in 2006 and an RCVS specialist status in 2007.
Emma is currently senior lecturer and clinician in rabbit, exotic Animal and Wildlife medicine and Surgery at Edinburgh University, with a high clinical teaching caseload of exotic pet species, both first opinion and referral cases. Emma lectures nationally and internationally on exotic pets, zoos, and wildlife medicine. So Emma, welcome to the webinar, vet, and it's over to you.
Thank you so much. It's an absolute privilege to be here today and I wanted to also thank Burgess for their sponsorship of the session, and thank you to all who've joined live. It's wonderful that you're here and that you're interested in this topic.
So what I'm hoping is that you will learn, quite a few things about our pet guinea pigs, and particularly, obviously, we're talking today about geriatric guinea pigs. And this is something I want to sort of talk about what is geriatric? Why are guinea pigs living longer, and why are we sort of so worried about, potential welfare implications of this?
So, our learning objectives, we're going to recognise that they're popular pets. We're hopefully going to recognise that it's really important to get our husbandry and nutrition, spot on, and that's happening a lot more, so they're living longer. But with that, what are the potential health issues that that go in line, with old age?
And are we able to recognise those clinical signs and obviously then decide on the appropriate diagnostics to choose? And then on top of that, obviously, what treatments are we going to give and what's safe for older animals. And in particular, we're often talking about, pain relief for these animals, because of things like osteoarthritis as they get older.
So why are guinea pigs important? Well, I, I think guinea pigs are important because I love them. They're great.
They're, they're amazing little animals. They're lovely pets. Certainly in here in the UK they're really, really popular as pets.
And the most recent sort of information that we have, a guesstimate of about 0.9 million are kept here. But that's quite similar actually to our numbers of pet rabbits in the UK, which is about a million.
So, really, we should be giving these little guys as much sort of time and effort as we are for our rabbit patients. And what I thought was really interesting is that we actually have the same number of horses and ponies owned in the UK. As we do pet guinea pigs, certainly on our veterinary curriculum, we put a large emphasis on our equine medicine and surgery lectures to our students.
And actually currently, we only have two lectures for little guinea pigs, but that the same number of animals being kept. Another reason why they're so important, I think, there's, there's historically really been a bit of a lack of awareness of what is the correct hospital and diet for guinea pigs. And, and I still feel there's a lot of work to be done on this.
And unfortunately, because we're not sort of, really do. The studies that are required to actually learn what what gap guinea pigs need for the husbandry and diet. This can potentially lead to welfare issues.
If we don't get the diet correct, if we don't keep them correctly, we can get problems ensuing, and that could be a welfare concern. Another reason, certainly, we very routinely vaccinate rabbits, and so we tend to see them regularly on an annual basis in our vet practise. But for guinea pigs, there aren't any routine vaccinations.
So they tend not be brought to the vet, for a checkup or a health check. Often what we get is an emergency situation. Help my guinea pigs in dire need, and it's then brought to the vet for the first time and never having been checked before.
And, you know, I think that's really important because obviously, we could be giving advice at a much earlier stage on what the correct way of keeping and feeding these individuals is. I started thinking about what is geriatric, because obviously we use this term quite a lot. And I think that guinea pigs are living a lot longer, and that's my sort of appreciation over the last sort of 5 to 10 years.
And when I started looking into this, our, our average lifespan, apparently in captivity is 5 to 8 years. But we generally are thinking of any animal over the age of 3 as potentially being geriatric. And what's interesting, I looked up what is the oldest guinea pig ever to have lived.
Well, there, there was a guinea pig. Unfortunately, he's since died, but he was age 14 and 10.5 months, and he was called Snowball.
So that's an incredible age to have lived to. But obviously, as these little guys are living longer, we're going to get more issues associated with old age. And why do we need to consider this?
I mean, you could be saying, well, so what, you know, a lot of animals live a long time. I think that we are getting better awareness of what guinea pigs needs are and a little bit better owner. Of what they need to provide and how that animals should be kept.
And I think because of this, guinea pigs are living longer. And therefore, I think we are seeing them more in veterinary practise. Certainly a lot of geriatric animals come through our practise regularly.
And certainly, when I come to talk about the problems that we see with these guinea pigs, they are relatively commonplace and often go undiagnosed. So I was trying to think, what are the main things that I see in old guinea pigs. And I think some of these won't surprise you.
Some of these perhaps are things that you see anyhow in guinea pigs. So, obviously, dental disease is up there as number one. That probably isn't a surprise to to any of you.
But certainly also, we, we do see a lot of individuals with kidney disease and possibly related to that, but possibly unrelated cystitis and, and urinary tract infections. And as guinea pigs are living, longer than, particularly in females, we're getting cystic ovarian disease. We do see, dilated cardiomyopathy, and one of my particular interests is, the development of osteoarthritis and degenerative joint disease in older guinea pigs.
And this is something, again, that we are seeing very regularly in our guinea pig cases. Other things I've listed there, probably, you know, fairly commonplace, obviously neoplasia with old age is is no surprise to any of you, presumably. We do also see a lot of poder dermatitis issues and in the male guinea pigs, more commonly, caudal scent gland and faecal impactions.
And then just at the end, some of the ophthalmic conditions and hyperthyroidism, which is something I just really wanted you guys to be aware of. Hopefully, many of you are already, but this is something again that that could be increased with old age. So just to recap really on dental season, and again, it's very similar really to, to rabbits.
So in some some ways, you can extrapolate. There are a couple of little differences that I'm just gonna talk you through. They are herbivorous guinea pigs, and their dentition is continuously growing, all of the dental arcades.
So this is kind of similar to a rabbit, but they do have the actual, incisor position, which is behind those, the lower incisor sitting. Behind those upper, more curved incisors. And that's kind of more of a, a classic rodent, incisor position.
When at rest, the cheek teeth are aligned so that they sit and rest together and the lower incisors are just behind but not in contact with the upper incisors. We do have, dental charts for guinea pigs, which are really useful, and I would urge you to use these in practise. They're really helpful for documenting, any potential pocketing, any spike formation, any loose teeth or missing teeth.
And they're quite a nice record to keep, particularly for doing regular dentals on an individual. You can then look back and compare, how things have progressed over time. I popped the, the classic dental formula up there just to remind you for our little hytriomorphs.
So those are guinea pigs, das and chinchillas. Slightly different to our myomorphs, who are also rodents, the rats and mice. They, don't have a premolar one.
And their molar teeth are not continuously growing. Whereas with the histria moss, the guinea pigs, everything is constantly growing. So this is why we tend to get issues if the dental wear is not appropriate, the arcades will and crowns will grow and continue to overgrow and potentially cause problems.
I've just put up here the position of the upper incisors, and when the animal's chewing, the front, will move backwards and forwards against the, the, sorry, the upper, the maxilla will move backwards and forwards against the mandible. And then with the lower in size, you can see how chisel shaped that is, and, and the normal position of that as it sits behind, but not touching the upper incisor. And then we've got the, the movement there, as you can see.
So again, we're moving backwards and forwards as we're chewing. And this is really important for dental wear. And then we can see there, we've got the molar teeth, and the upper molar teeth just outlined there.
So you can see how that dental formula at the bottom fits with those arrows that are placed on the, on the diagram. It is one of the most common guinea pig disorders that is seen, and, and a lot of papers document this, and it is something we need to obviously be aware of. But I think there's sometimes a tendency for us in practise to say it's definitely dental disease when there may be something else going on, and perhaps the dental disease has occurred because the animals in Appetent, and it's not actually grinding those arcades down and wearing them appropriately.
So we get a secondary overgrowth. So it could be there's something underlying, that could be pain or systemic disease, and the dentition that you're seeing that's abnormal is more related to the hypo anorexia. Really important to note in guinea pigs, and I've done a very sort of simple schematic drawing here.
And, I would just want to actually acknowledge my colleague, Dr. Jenna Richardson, for some of these slides, and some of the photos. But a very sort of simple schematic drawing of how the guinea pig upper and lower cheek tooth arcades look when you're looking into the mouth.
With an otoscope. And in rabbits, they're usually really, really straight. So you look, you look in straight and you see these lovely straight teeth.
In guinea pigs, it can be very difficult to visualise the cheek teeth because they're growing at these angles. And I'm hoping that with that schematic diagram, you can sort of see where you're trying to look with your otoscope comb when you're examining guinea pigs' mouths. And certainly with the pictures here, you can also see that that's a normal, slanting angulation of those cheek teeth.
So sometimes you have to actually sort of almost hunt around to, to find the teeth. And, there's another reason why it can be difficult. Guinea pigs also store a lot of food in their mouths.
And so food that's, within the mouth can definitely get in the way of your otoscope and you can't see anything except, green ingested matter. So sometimes you do actually have to clean the oral cavity with a couple of, of damp sort of cotton buds, so that you can actually see what's going on. So I've got a little picture there of a little guinea pig being very accommodating, and we're using quite a huge cone there, but that will give us a much better visualisation of those dental arcades.
And if we're only putting it a very short way into the mouth for a short period of time, usually this is quite well tolerated. One thing we can also do if we're, we're cleaning the mouth with cotton buds is we can just have a little sniff of that when it comes out. Not a nice thing to do, but as vets, we're quite used to these things.
Just to see if the cotton bud is quite bad smelling, because that could indicate that you've got some infection. The mouth, or potentially you've got food material that's become sort of fermented over time and is stuck in a pocket up inside the mouth somewhere. So it's quite a helpful tool just to see if you've got an abnormal smell to the to the end of your cotton bud.
One of the really big things to do, and I've got some pictures just to show you in a minute, is to check that the tongue is able to freely move. So even if you can't visualise the dental arcades easily, there's so much food in the mouth or the guinea pig's really unhappy. Do look and see if the tongue's moving.
Because if the tongue is able to move, that's wonderful. If it really can't, it's, it may well be that it's quite entrapped by the dental arcades on the lower aspect. Growing over the tongue, so the mandibular cheek teeth.
This is such a problem, particularly in guinea pigs. We don't tend to see it in rabbits. And it tends to be that very first premolar that, overgrows medialy towards the tongue, on the mandibular, arcades.
So this is just to show you a little guinea pig that we've anaesthetized. We've used mouth gags just to get a better visualisation, and you can see that those first premolars on the lower arcade of overgrown the tongue, meaning that the the guinea pigs finding it very hard to chew and eat properly, and therefore, It is quite anorexic. And I've just also shown you the normal occusal line in the blue arrows on the photo on the right of just a skull.
That's how we should be looking. But because we got overgrowth of those arcades, this has become a problem and has prevented this animal from eating properly. So what sort of signs are we likely to see?
They're pretty typical and sometimes can present with pretty severe clinical signs, particularly with things like large facial abscesses. And obviously, everyone can see the picture at the top there. We've got a guinea pig with a huge facial swelling.
This is most likely to be a dental abscess, but obviously could be related to other things such as the ear. We, we quite often get excess salivation, so having a really good look on the underside of the chin to see if there's any saliva there. And certainly also, if we have any involvement of the tear duct, with overgrowth of the maxillary roots of the teeth, then that can present with epiphara, tear overflow, and potentially excoriation of the skin around the medial campus of the eye.
So quite typical clinical signs, we can, we can extrapolate those signs from from rabbits. Often animals have reduced appetite, maybe completely anorexic, or perhaps they're picking up food and then dropping it, and not able to chew properly. What can we do to try and diagnose?
Well, obviously, we are very, very lucky at Edinburgh University. We have a CT on site, a lot of practises now do have this available. And it's a wonderful imaging modality because we can get a really good 3D image of that skull, and have a really close look at what's going on within the actual bone of the jaw.
But radiography is also very helpful and useful, and standard views that you use in rabbits can be used, and this can then be helpfully interpreted and hopefully, would indicate if you've got any tooth root pathology. And the sort of things we tend to see with guinea pigs, very similar really to, rabbits. We can get fractures.
They can actually have these, these really quite large abnormal teeth called macrodontia. And that's something that, that's kind of quite unique to guinea pigs. But more commonly, we tend to see these, these crown elongations and dental spikes, which then cause ulceration and secondary infections.
And I've mentioned also that tongue entrapment that's really important to note in guinea pigs in particular. Looking at the diagnosis of this, I'd, I'd sort of talked a little bit about it. Obviously, we're gonna look at our clinical history.
What's the diet like? Are we getting a lot of, fruit perhaps in the diet, or we, we getting a lot of treats given? I think it's really important to, to actually really drill down into that and, and get as much information as possible from the owner.
And quite often it won't be voluntarily given. So asking if the a mole actually gets treats, asking if the animal gets sugary items, is really, really important, and asking how much pelleted food versus hay they get, and how much perhaps the individual actually eats. It might be they get offered hay, but it doesn't actually like to eat it.
So this is, this is something that's quite important within the clinical history. I mentioned all the further diagnostics that we can do. I think the most important thing is thinking about the long term care for this animal, because usually, once we are seeing guinea pigs with dental disease, we've already got quite chronic changes going on.
And even with regular repeated burring and dentals under general anaesthetic, these animals do need long term care. They don't, tend to cure. It tends to be that this is a management, and a long term management.
And sometimes they can progress despite your best efforts, to the formation of things like facial abscesses, secondary to to tooth root infection. So quite important to have long term pain management for these individuals. I'll come to talk about that a little bit later.
And also to, to, you know, having drilled down into the diet, and found out more about that, potentially to initiate some dietary changes to try and increase the hay content, the fibre content of the diet, and perhaps cut out all these treats if they are being given, and reduce perhaps the pelleted part of the diet as well, depending on the individual. So just as a sort of synopsis for dental disease and, you know, this, this lecture isn't we haven't really got the time to talk about it in more detail. We could probably give a whole day course on, on guinea pig dental disease, but it is really, really common.
It potentially is preventable if we get the diet right, right from the start. If it's very, very early. Detected, which rarely it is in pet guinea pigs, it could be reversible with regular repeat dentals, but generally they tend to present with moderate to advanced dent disease.
And in these cases, it's really important to talk to the owner about what this means for the long term care of that individual and its welfare as well. And certainly ensuring that there is enough dietary fibre and never forget the importance of vitamin C in our in our pet guinea pigs. So I think the second most common thing that we tend to see in all the guinea pigs is kidney disease.
And often these individuals present really for sort of reduced appetites. Sometimes it could be a bit lethargic. More often than not, they've lost body condition.
So the pictures you can see here and the slide, both of these animals look very thin to me. You can really see the outline of the back. You can see the flanks very easily.
And certainly I would be thinking, goodness, is there an underlying, kidney issue in these individuals? I mean, there might be other reasons, but obviously, particularly if it's an older animal, we need to be aware of this. Sometimes they will be drinking more, but not always.
More often than not, it's the loss of body condition, the weight loss over time, and perhaps a reduction in appetite. It can be difficult because obviously, you've got an animal that is in quite a debilitated state. Do you want to anaesthetize it and take some bloods?
Obviously, that would be great, because then we can look at our renal parameters, or perhaps do we want to do a conscious ultrasound of the kidneys to see if we've got any obvious changes there. But also urinalysis is really, really helpful in these cases. And we quite often will look at the urine protein creatinine ratio and see if that is elevated.
And there have been normals published now in guinea pigs, which are really helpful. And and therefore, we can, we can see if we we think these are elevated and of concern. And in terms of treatment, generally, it is just supportive, so we often get these individuals back for regular health checks, regular weight and body condition scores.
We're going to try and increase our fluid intake. Obviously, if it's chronic, this can be done over time. If it's an acute renal condition, we might have to hospitalise that animal, and give it fluids, and obviously monitor any potential azotemia.
Reducing dietary protein, obviously, again, drilling down into the diet to see what's going on there, what they're being fed, perhaps reducing the, the, pelleted component of the diet or choosing a diet that's perhaps got a little bit low protein might be a good idea in that individual. And we're just going to be really careful of using our non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in older animals if we don't know what their renal status is. These, this could be a contraindication, and certainly if an animal's in any way dehydrated, we wouldn't want to use this.
There are other medications we use and I come on to talk about those in just a short while. Cystitis is our 3rd most common condition. And again, you could say, well, actually, any guinea pig can get cystitis and urinary tract infections.
It is very, very common. The reason why in older animals, I'm, I'm particularly concerned about this is we often do have reduced mobility, and so these individuals tend to be sitting in one place and urinating, and, and the ascending infection can occur in that situation. We can also get this secondary to, stone formation.
And that's obviously quite a common condition in pet guinea pigs. But we might also be, an individual that doesn't tend to drink very much. And so that could potentially lead to problems, with, with a cystitis developing.
So there's Lots of thoughts over what that might be the underlying predisposing causes for this condition in pet guinea pigs. But certainly in older animals, I'm, I'm always really worried about an animal with potentially osteoarthritis. Could it then have a secondary urinary tract infection or UTI?
There are lots of different studies, and, and some people quote that females seem to be more prone because they, they, have a much closer, anogenital distance. So, it's more likely that they'll get infections from an ascending bacteria. But, there are other reports that there is no increased incident in females.
So I think, you know, it's, it's just one of those things. It's very, very common generally in guinea pigs. Often it goes in hand with stone formation and which comes first?
Is it the bacterial infection, or is it that there's a stone and then we've got a secondary infection occurring. So, often we can't answer that question, but it's interesting to note. Lots of different bacteria could be involved.
And again, I think those are probably not surprising to you, to read through those different types. But what we tend to see is an animal that's really quite uncomfortable, and they're often vocalising, they're often teeth grinding. They may have difficulty urinating, and they might actually, vocalise when urinating.
So guinea pigs are lovely little individuals, and they, they do tend to let you know when they're not happy. So they will make, a vocalisation noise, and obviously that will then alert owners to the fact there might be a problem. And then secondary to that, we often get gut stasis or gastrointestinal ileus, due to the fact there's pain, and there's infection there, and the guinea pig starts, to reduce the amount of food intake, and then the, intestines slow down in their normal peristalsis.
And over time, we can get weight loss with any chronic infection that can occur. So, it's very painful. We're going to think about giving some analgesia, and I've just suggested some pain relief there.
As I mentioned before, if we're not sure about the renal status, I probably wouldn't be giving meloxicam initially until I was happy that there wasn't underlying renal issues. It would be great to do bloods, but generally we do have to anaesthetize these little guys for this. And obviously you need to be, assessing whether that's OK, and the individual will, cope well with an anaesthetic.
But something that perhaps owners could do at home that's fairly straightforward, is a free catch a urine sample, trying to get this as soon as it's been voided is important so that we don't get faecal contamination, or sometimes we'll get these little guys admitted into our day ward just to try and get a urine sample for the day in a little pea pod that we set up for them. It is important to do diagnostic imaging, so a radiograph will show up very quickly, whether we've got any uroliths present anywhere along the urinary tract. So always consider doing radiographs in an animal that's got dysuria.
And I've just mentioned the different blood sample potential sites there. I I, I find sometimes I can get a sample very easily from the cephalic vein. Usually, obviously always anaesthetized, but there are other sites that you can use.
The veins often are very small and can collapse quite easily. I've highlighted the urinalysis because this is something that's quite straightforward and usually owners are quite on board, in terms of, of getting a sample of that. It's not too expensive a diagnostic, and it's something that I think is quite helpful, to at least do that and as perhaps a single radiograph of the animal, to rule out any stone formation as well.
If we can do cultures and sensitivities, we might want to do an ultrasound guided cystocentesis under sedation or GA while we're taking our bloods. But pending any culture results, we could start a first line antibiotic therapy. And one of the, the ones we tend to choose is trimethamine sulphur, because it's well concentrated in the urine.
But obviously, we do want to check that that's effective. We want to do urinalysis to see if we've got a bacterial infection there. So that's really important to do some continuing monitoring, as you go along.
And in some cases, if it's particularly bad, we might consider flushing the bladder with warm saline, under general anaesthetic. And this is more if we're thinking we've got a build up of urinary crystals in the bladder. It can be difficult, these cases.
They can be quite frustrating, particularly if there are underlying causes, and that's why that these animals or individuals are getting recurrent infections. And I think talking to the owner about that and managing owners' expectations are really, really important. Things that we can advise, perhaps increasing the water intake, in rabbits, we always talk about giving a bowl and a bottle as a source for water.
In guinea pigs, the studies they've done, they, they tend to show that actually they seem to prefer the bottle rather than bowl, which is the opposite to rabbits. And this is because they think that, guinea pigs are, much more sort of orally stimulated animals. So, being able to chew the end of the, the water bottle spout, actually, is quite enjoyable for the guinea pigs and encourages them to drink more water.
But I would say always offer both. Trying to increase that water intake is important, so we could also gently spray or wet any of the greens that we're feeding. We want to try and keep things as stress free as possible because that could predispose.
And obviously, when I mentioned there could be other underlying conditions like obesity, or classically, we see it with stifle osteoarthritis. So thinking about those underlying things as well. What sort of treatments?
Well, antibiotics, ideally based on culture and sensitivity, or pain relief. And then I've put a few other different treatments up here that we could consider. Certainly, there's some evidence that they may be beneficial.
And certainly glucosamine is one that people often talk about as well as potassium citrate, and they aren't ones that I would routinely use, but I would definitely make sure that vitamin C intake is is appropriate for the individual. And I mentioned about multiple sources for water and also wetting the greens. So moving on to our cystic ovarian disease, this happens quite commonly in older female animals, but I have seen it in individuals aged sort of 2 or 3.
And it does seem to be such a common condition. Certainly, most older female entire guinea pigs we see tend to have these ovarian cysts. And there are different types of cysts, which I've listed there.
The serous or fluid-filled ones, they're often not functional, so they're not. Excreting any hormones or the follicular cysts, they're slightly less common, but these do produce oestrogen. So they can actually then present with signs of hyperestrogen.
So we get the flank alopecia, we get hyperkeratosis of the the nipples, and we may get some irregular cycling. What is interesting is that often they can be mixed, so sometimes we will see follicles that are both serious and sorry ovarian cysts that are both serious and follicular in nature, and actually I think that's more commonly the clinical picture that we see. So apologies for this rather gruesome picture, just to show you these huge cysts with the stars highlighted there.
They can get really quite large. We're not entirely sure what the aetiology of the the development of the cysts are, but they have postulated it could be due to high oestrogen intake, due to hay intake, or potentially alterations in the inhibit FSH system. So we, we don't know, but it does seem to be a very common condition in older female guinea pigs.
I mentioned the sort of clinical signs we're seeing, certainly if they're very, very large, they do tend to cause real abdominal distention. And I think that this does cause pain and discomfort. And when you're handling them to try and examine, they're often quite uncomfortable.
We could see some vaginal bleeding, and I've got a picture here just to show you get these sort of, hyperkeratosis of the nipple area. So do have a look there and see if you've got sort of almost appears slightly sort of crusty around the, the nipples on these individuals. And it might over time lead to secondary problems like stasis and weight loss.
Often these are really easily palpable. So what I tend to do when I'm feeling the abdomen is try and locate the kidneys first, so you know what you're feeling. And they are cranial to these cysts.
And then if you can feel the normal kidneys, just move cordially and see if you can feel anything just behind them on each side. And these tend to be quite irregular. They can be as big as the kidneys, but the surface tend to be quite irregular.
And often, the guinea pig really doesn't like you, having a feel in that area and will vocalise or perhaps wriggle and move away. If you have a suspicion, then do, perform an ultrasound, very easy to do. It's perform conscious, guinea pigs tend not to mind you doing it.
And certainly, usually you can see these very large fluid filled areas. Treatment can be really frustrating, and I find this very difficult. So there are lots of different medical treatments that are talked about for these, for cystic ovarian disease and guinea pigs.
I found that most of these don't work. And certainly we were very, very hopeful that these super implants, Dearone, GNRH agonists would be. Helpful in perhaps preventing this, but actually the studies that we've seen coming out recently have shown that that they don't.
So they're very poor in preventing this development of cysts. And the other treatments, again, it would be great to hear from people who perhaps had different experience, but again, I haven't had very much luck with the the treatments listed here. So often we may have to do palliative care and very geriatric animals, and this could involve potentially sedating the animal and then doing ultrasound guided percutaneous drainage if we've got very large fluid filled cysts.
And that is an option, a palliative option for a geriatric animal. But obviously, they will refill over time, and you need to have a careful discussion with the owners to how often we can do this and how that might affect the individual's welfare. The only real treatment that's that's going to solve the problem is to perform an ovarectomy or an ovarian hysterectomy.
And that's something to consider. But obviously, if you've got a really old animal, you might be concerned about putting it under an anaesthetic. So moving on, cardiovascular disease, dilated cardiomyopathy is quite common in little guinea pigs.
It often actually presents though as respiratory dyspnea. And I've got a little picture. I'm hoping this will work here, this video, just to show you a little guinea pig.
So the one, that you can see as you're looking at the screen on your left, you can see the nose really moving, the head is bobbing there. This animal's really dyspneic. And hopefully you can see that in comparison with its, its little friend it's sat next to.
I'll just play that again just so that you can see it. So if I've got a dysp guinea pig, I'm always thinking, could it be an underlying cardiac issue? Because this is one of the most common presenting clinical signs.
Diagnosis is as for other species, and we can do all of this in guinea pigs, and there have been sort of normals that, have been, recorded. So that's really helpful. And the treatment wise, I've put quite a few different treatments up there.
The, the problem I find is often, these individuals quite in a quite advanced state. And so the prognosis does tend to be poor with only very short post diagnosis survival rates. So talking to the owner about that and explaining that we have concerns about that individual is really, really important.
Moving on to osteoarthritis and genitive joint disease, which was further down our list, but actually possibly, I think, should be quite high up on the list. It's really something that we see incredibly commonly in our older guinea pigs, and actually, we're seeing it in quite young guinea pigs as well from the age of 3 onwards, I would say. We did a study quite a while back at Edinburgh University and looked at all our radiographic studies of guinea pigs.
And actually, every single one that we looked at, I think the total number, I can't remember the exact total number, but it was in the, in the 10s, so probably about 30 animals. They all had, some changes within a joint, associated with osteoarthritis. So How significant this is like in people we don't know radiographically how comparable to pain levels the changes are on the radiographs.
So, but if we're seeing it, I think probably there is a cause for concern. Why might we be seeing it? Well, possibly animals are living longer.
It could be that we do have a lot of obesity and therefore extra weight on those joints. And certainly, There's some thought that possibly inadequate exercise substrate, depending on, you know, firm hard substrates that are not very padded might might increase joint trauma. Lots of different thoughts as to why guinea pigs could develop this condition.
But it certainly is a really big issue. And, I think it often goes unnoticed by owners. I had a guinea pig in just yesterday, that was 4 years old with severe, stifle osteoarthritis, and the owners had no idea that that was occurring.
So, it has been reported in very young guinea pigs as well. What we tend to see with this is not the owners noticing that there's a problem with locomotion. Although sometimes if you actually ask, the individuals have stopped doing things like popcorning several years ago.
But usually we see secondary problems. So we see urine staining of the back end that can lead to actual scaling of the perineum. We often see poo dermatitis and definitely weight loss as well.
So if I'm seeing any of those three signs, I immediately start thinking, have we got osteoarthritis going on? And often you can actually appreciate these. So they're so thickened that there are palpable changes to the stifle joints.
There may be pain and crepitus. And certainly when we're trying to actually move those joints, there is reduced range of movement. We're going to diagnose this as we would osteoarthritis in any other animal.
How significant it is. Obviously, you know, I think it depends on the clinical signs as well as what you're seeing on your diagnostics. This picture is just to show you a guinea pig with really, really severe hock osteoarthritis.
We're gently trying to fully, flex that joint, and we can't because it's absolutely fused with those changes. So that's one of the classic signs that you'll see. You won't be able to put, do full flexion or full extension.
And you can see on the base of that foot with that individual's already started to get poto dermatitis. So there's a really nasty wore developing. So treatment is palliative, long term pain relief, physiotherapy, softer bedding.
We might have to reduce weight if we're overweight, but often these individuals are quite underweight. And I think very, very important to have that quality of life discussion with the owner about the welfare of that individual, because it is likely to be painful and it's only likely to get worse. It's not going to be curable.
And in really severe cases, it's, it may be that euthanasia does have to be discussed. Some of the supplements that we can use, I've, I've popped these up here just to show you, and certainly glucosamine, there's some really good studies in guinea pigs showing that this may be beneficial as a preventative supplement in guinea pigs. So giving it early on before osteoarthritis develops.
But often in our individuals, it's going to be a bit too late for that. What can we advise owners? Well, again, I just want to put a few thoughts up there.
I'm gonna let you read through that as I talk, but certainly all of this makes sense, gonna make it more comfortable for the, for the individual. We're also going to prevent them from having to reach up to things like hay racks. We're going to remove any stairs that they have to climb onto, and we're going to have regular checkups for them, particularly keeping an eye on weights, is very, very important.
And one thing that we could think about, certainly in the UK it can get quite cold in some of these, houses. So perhaps a little snuggle, safe, or heat pad at night, might also help. And if you're getting really long nails on a guinea pig, I would also start thinking about whether this animal could have osteoarthritis.
It's not moving around to wear those nails down. So moving on from that, just to consider some other things that guinea pigs get. Obviously, neoplasms, very common in any animal as they get older.
But the big thing that we see with little guinea pigs is this thing called trichoolliuloma, which is quite a large growth that can occur over the. Awesome or back end of the individual. And it can get very big.
It tends it is benign. So it tends not to be a problem. But usually we do consider excising them because they can actually burst and become ulcerated and become sore.
Any skin mass, obviously, we're gonna be wanting to do some work up on and certainly a fine needle aspirate, or a biopsy and, and some cytology or histopathology is really, really important. With mammary tumours, they can get absolutely huge, as you can see in this individual. What I think is really important to recognise is that they can occur in males, and actually in males, they're much more common and they often are malignant.
So that's really important. Don't, don't rule out mammary tumours just because it's a male animal. Again, we're going to manage these cases as we would any other animal with a mammary mass.
Really important to assess for metastasis prior to doing anything about removing it. And do always send these off, so that we know what's going on, with, with that particular, you know, type of tumour. We want to know exactly what it is.
Another thing that we see is lymphoma in pet guinea pigs. I've done a big error on that picture just to show you that enlarged lymph node there. Very it is relatively common.
It can be associated with a viral infection, but usually, unfortunately, prognosis is pretty poor. Once I've, seen this and diagnosed it, usually, it can be only a matter of 2 to 5 weeks before, the individual progresses. And unfortunately, this is because they're presenting quite late on in the course of the disease.
There are lots of ways of confirming this. There have been treatment options discussed, but generally, as I say, they, they're presenting much further down the line in individuals that are already very sick. But we could consider palliative care.
I think oral prednisolone, 12 makes per kg, once a day perros is something that we could consider in these cases. But prognosis is generally pretty poor. Poto dermatitis, this is quite a common condition that I mentioned, can get very, very severe.
Often in geriatric animals, it can affect all four of the feet. And certainly, there are lots of predisposing factors, which are quite similar. We've talked through these with our osteoarthritis.
And treatments very similar, for osteoarthritis. We want to be thinking about soft bedding. And we might consider, actually some little dressings of those, sores if they're particularly bad, particularly the picture at the top there, we would be considering those.
Another thing that we see, particularly in older male guinea pigs is the caudal scent gland, and that can get really sort of infected, and can be very obvious. And that's something just to be aware of when you're doing a clinical exam and particularly males do have a look at the back end. And then certainly older males, we do apologise for how graphic this picture is.
It's not a very pleasant picture, but we do certainly see faecal impaction in older male guinea pigs. They tend to get very sort of saggy at the back end, and the faeces can build up. As they're passing out of the anus in this sort of sack like area and become really quite a problem.
And obviously that can lead to fly strike and meiosis as well. Sometimes owners have to manage these daily with manual evacuate evacuations, and cleaning of that area. So something just to be aware of in older guinea pigs.
We've also got some ophthalmic conditions. I just want to mention PI, which is this little, white sort of area, usually on the lower lids, it's just a fatty infiltrate, usually not a problem, but just something to note that guinea pigs in particular can get. And certainly guinea pigs seem like rabbits very prone to corneal ulcers, as well as conjunctivitis.
So, just being aware of that and, and certainly very similar in terms of the treatment, that we would give for, for rabbits as well. And we do sometimes see ex ophthalmo. You can see the picture at the bottom here, associated with dental disease and retrobulb abscess formation.
Not, don't forget cataracts. It's quite important. Guinea pigs as they get older can also develop cataracts, and these could just be old age changes.
But obviously, owners might report that the animal becomes a little bit more sensitive to light. There's not much we can do about it, but it's something that is worth noting and letting owners know about. We also have issues, .
Often I find with hyperthyroidism. So this is something I think that's more and more commonly being recognised in guinea pigs. And this is where the thyroid gland, it is usually quite palpably enlarged, at the neck area.
It is one of the most common endocrine disorders of guinea pigs. It's something we're recognising more and more. And again, it's something that older guinea pigs tend to get.
And it can present very similar to renal disease with really just weight loss and a reduced body condition score. But usually these animals are eating well. Just have a slide there really just to show you, what the diagnosis is and what our treatment options are.
But obviously, if you're diagnosing this, then there are lots of very helpful papers that will hopefully lead you towards, choosing which treatment options are best for your clinical cases. This was just showing a palpation of the thyroid gland in this individual. So I wanted to just to move on quickly in the last few minutes to pain management in in guinea pigs.
Guinea pigs are very good at hiding how painful they can be, and signs can be very, very subtle. We've got quite a different array of pain management that we can use. Certainly the opioids are very helpful and can be used, and there are doses that have been reported in guinea pigs, as well as our non-steroidals, but obviously we want to be careful in older animals with potential renal disease.
We do use gabapentin a fair amount in guinea pigs if we're concerned about neuropathic pain, and also mropotent can be used. It's anecdotally reported. I don't think there are any studies actually showing that it works in guinea pigs.
But I think it's really important to be aware of the different types of pain relief we can use so that we can have a multimodal approach. What are we going to do? Certainly with elderly guinea pigs with chronic disease problems, we want to set clear goals for the owner and we want to have regular checks of these individuals.
And it's very, very important to consider quality of life. We do have our guinea pig seismometer, which is available online. I've given you the resource there, so that will help you if you're not sure, and it will help owners to determine whether they think their individual pet is underweight, and certainly low body condition score.
And quality of life considerations are very, very important. And this is really the crux of things I think is to have a really good relationship and discussion with your clients talking about the things to look out for, the concerns that you might have, so that they're very clear when at which point we need to intervene and provide pain relief, but also when things become so severe that euthanasia does unfortunately need to be discussed. And at the vet school, we do have this quality of life form this one in particular, I think was for .
We, we have got one that is particularly for animals with recurrent urinary tract infections, but you could adapt it for any different chronic disease that a guinea pig was shown with. But I think this is something we can give out to owners and that we can get them to score on a daily basis to see if they feel the individual is progressing and getting worse. And I think this is quite a useful tool.
There are lots of these sort of available online, people adapt them. For their own use, and I think that's really helpful to have these in practise. I just quickly at the very end, wanted to discuss euthanasia.
We, always anaesthetize our animals for the injection because it's very difficult to get an intravenous access. So, usually using a gaseous induction and then, a barbiturate overdose, intracardiac. If an owner wants to be present, you could consider sedating the animal first.
I've given you some some doses there, and then potentially putting an IV catheter in. Usually I do that with owner not present because it can be quite technically challenging. And certainly individuals that have lost a companion, it grief is a really a really true response in pet guinea pigs, and it can be manifested in a multiple of different ways.
So again, talking to owners about an individual that's going to be left on its own is really, really important. Guinea pigs are such social animals, they really do need to be with other guinea pigs. So, it is important to recognise that, I think, and talk to our clients about it.
Got some references, all these things I've been talking about. Lots of new things are coming out about geriatric guinea pigs. If you're interested, please do have a read of these, and hopefully this will improve our, our knowledge of our ageing pet guinea pigs and our care of them as well.
Thank you so much for listening and appreciate your time. Emma, thank you so much for that presentation. And before we start getting to any questions, I just want to thank Excel Burgess for their sponsorship again tonight and specifically, Peter Lancaster.
Peter, welcome back to the webinarett. I know you're an old hand at being. With us.
And, big thank you to you and your company for sponsoring this evening. And, before we go to the questions, we are just going to have a presentation from Peter. Peter, it's over to you.
Thank you. Thank you, Bruce, and, thank you, Emma. That was a really informative, presentation.
And I hope people took took lots out of that and we'll be able to kind of help support these older guinea pigs when they come into, into practise. I'll try to go through this quite quickly because I know that people don't want to, want to, listen to me. They want to have their questions answered.
Just in terms of mature guinea pigs, we've been supporting a PhD student at Liverpool University, Mary, and this is an extract from a paper that she. A poster rather at BSAVA, in 2024. And you can see here this is from the, from the Savnet data which monitors the practise management software, and this is the kind of age curve of the guinea pigs that that they were seeing.
And you can see there once the kind of guinea pigs get to get above 4, that their, their numbers kind of decline. So that, that's kind of really, what we were looking at when we developed a, a mature guinea pig product. One of the other inspirations actually came from the last time we had a webinar with Emma, and she was talking about some of the issues again in that, that, that webinar looking at mature guinea pigs.
And that did lead us to develop our mature guinea pig product, . We have to have a cut-off point. We looking at the data from Mary, we said that actually it suggests that when they're above 4, we're starting to, to really see the need to support them.
And if you look at that data, it's over 35%, more than a third of guinea pigs would be classed as mature. So that, you know, it's a significant, number of the, the population that, that, we need to support there. So that led us to develop mature guinea pig nuggets, you can see here with with cranberry and mint.
What we are looking to do and er it's good that Emma's kind of touched on some of these issues, is look at some key areas to support where we can. This includes healthy joints, joint support, and we had glucosamine in in for that. As with all animals, we can can see a reduced cognitive function, so we're trying to support healthy brain health.
I'm glad that Emma mentioned kind of cataracts and eye health and the, the data that Mary, has from the south and that would suggest that the main reason why. That guinea pigs are going into practise is because of eye problems. Usually that that tends to be eye pokes and I'll touch on that a little bit later.
And then this is just an overall loss of vitality and as somebody who's urging myself I can sympathise with that, and there's some really interesting kind of ingredients that we can use to, to support that and and help with that. In terms of the brain health, what we use are monody and triglycerides, of fatty acids. These are used in the brain as a preferential, fuel.
And there's some really good studies in dogs and cats that show how this can can help cognition over a long term. And as has been explained to me, brain chemistry is the same in all species, so we can, you know, comfortably extrapolate that we can support brain health by using these chemicals in the, in the, sorry, chemicals, these fatty acids in the, in the same way. I'm kind of a bit of a smile on my face here because Emma clearly talked about osteoarthritis and we mentioned a small study that showed 100% of guinea pigs having signs of a joint change or osteoarthritis.
That's Emma's study that she mentioned in her paper from 2021. And yeah. Emma also mentioned, you know, supporting with glucosamine, it, it, it doesn't help.
We add glucosamine to the diet, it doesn't cure the issue. It does have a, you know, it's a preventative thing, but adding it to the diet can help start supporting those joints at an earlier age. And one of the key reasons why we, we have nuggets is that we can add functional ingredients to the to the product, and that can help support these, these animals having a a longer, happier life.
In terms of eye health, as I said, the research from, from Liverpool showed that eye problems are the main reason why these animals go into, into, into practise. And what we actually add to the mature guinea pig products is, is marigold. We use it in a few of our products, which is a really good source of lutein and, xanthin.
These are the kerainoid compounds, and they're. Antioxidants, particularly found in, in high, in the eye, and again across a variety of species there's, there's good research that they can help support eye health, which is why we add them to the mature guinea pig nuggets. And then in terms of Gut health and overall vitality, you know, people are talking more and more about the microbiome and how it can impact on, on, on not just gut health and digestive health, but overall vitality.
There is talk about potentially having impact in humans around mood and things like that, . What we are adding to the mature guinea pig nuggets are these the postbiotics, which is this tinderized Laccaa bacillus, and again there's some really good research to show how that they supported the vitality in dogs as they aged, so the dogs could run faster and longer compared to the control group. And again, the mechanism is, should be very similar, so, again we can extrapolate that we'll be able to help support vitality in in the guinea pigs.
The Manon oligosaccharides and, and beta, glucoms, and the fruit or saccharides, these are some of the things we've been putting in our products for, for a long time. They do help support the, the healthy digestion system, but there's more and more research just showing how they support overall health, and, you know, support the immune system again, helping these animals have a. And a happier, better, better life, so as I say, they're the key things that we're putting into the mature guinea pig nuggets.
The mature guinea pig nuggets are part of a range, so we have the, the guinea pig nuggets with mint and, and blackcurrant or hana. These are a flavour option. They're supported with the vitamin C and everything that you'd expect to be in the guinea pig nuggets.
We have the indoor guinea pig nuggets which are, well, the world's first product ever formulated for indoor guinea pigs, and the mature guinea pig nuggets which . I think you're probably our most advanced formulation now, and when you look at the ingredients, I would, yeah. Consider looking at the what is available for mach pigs and what people are actually putting into formulations and I think you'll find that actually we have a product that's really genuine and sincere, targeting those specific needs of the animals as they get older.
But it's not just about nuggets, you know, we need not to forget the hair. And we have a great range of, really high quality feeding here. And I talked about these last time, our new foraging feast mini bales.
They're a great kind of, they're seen as a treat and we will put them in the shops alongside treats. These are 99% Timothy here, so it's a great way to make sure that the animals get a good, good quality hay intake whilst being a bit of fun both for the animal and for the, for the owners. There's one thing I I noticed that I, I put this slide in whilst whilst I was talking in terms of soft bedding, we do have the Napa Nest paper bedding, which is, is really soft, it's easy to spot clean, it's dust free and you can make a really deep bedding with this for these guinea pigs to dive into and hide without the risk of any eye pokes or anything like that.
So it's a really great products for, for the guinea pigs. So please don't forget about that. And finally, as always, just a request, there's a QR code here, we are moving towards rabbit Awareness Week, so a quick change of species there.
This year's theme is Happy Hoppy Homes, which I think we should be endeavouring to give these animals. Scan the QR code there, you'll be able to sign up to get your packs. And as always, we have loads of literature and posters available and if you contact us on the email address there, we'll love to to speak to you and send these things out.
That's it, Bruce. Thank you. Thank you, Emma.
Hopefully it's still time for some questions. Peter, thank you very much. And once again, a huge big thank you to Burges for their generous sponsorship for the whole series, not only tonight, but for the whole series on our exotic children.
It really is much appreciated. And folks, if you go on to the Burgess website or send them an email, they really do have some magnificent support material and everything. So, we have run out of time, so we are not going to go through questions, but, Emma, I did want to just say to you that we have had loads of comments coming through of people thanking you, for a great presentation and how much they have learned.
There have been a lot of questions coming through. We will be sending those through or Dawn will be through to you, Emma, and we ask you once again, pretty pleased if you can give us some answers, so that we don't leave people hanging with the questions that they had. But definitely loads and loads of thanks coming through.
So thank you, Emma. Thank you so much. That's wonderful to hear, and apologies for, running slightly over time, and definitely no problem.
I will try and get on those those questions and send you answers. So hopefully, that will, satisfy everyone who's been wonderful and and been posting on there. So thanks very much indeed.
Thank you, Emma. Once again, a big thank you to Burgess and to Peter, and then last but not least, to Dawn, my controller in the background. Thank you for making everything run smoothly.
And very last thank you goes to all of you for attending. We do appreciate you coming on and we hope that you have enjoyed it and that you have learned, as much as what I have. So from myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's goodnight.
