ShadyBro wrote:Does anyone have experience dealing with abscessed teeth in rats? One of my girls has a nasty big abscess on her jaw that's been going back and fourth between golf ball sized to barely noticeable for the past week. My best guess would be a tooth issue due to its placement, and its not drainable from the outside so she would have to be put under to work on it from inside her mouth. Neither I nor my rat vet thought it fair to put such an old rat through dental surgery, but she isn't in pain either (thanks to some really nice pain-killers and her being a total champ about taking her meds) so its been hard trying to decide what to do. Her teeth have begun to misalign from the repeated swelling however, so I am starting to think her time is up if the abscess doesn't go away on its own with the antibiotics soon. I was thinking about getting some xrays at my local vet office but wanted to ask around and see if anyone had their own experiences to share, to see if it would be worth it. I do not have a great local vet when it comes to final decisions - he doesn't see small animals as being 'worth it' and mostly works on farm animals so he has that nasty 'just kill it' mentality (and this is who I would see about having her put down since my experienced rat vet that I use for surgeries and the like is about three hours away), so I wont be taking advice on that from him anytime soon and wanted to rather hear from other actual pet owners to see what others have dealt with in malocclusion.
I had a blue hooded rex named Teddy whom had to be put down from a mouth abscess that sprung up last autumn. He was about 2 years at the time and was also suffering from a pretty aggressive URI that wasn't getting better despite all the different meds and antibiotics that we tried to put him on. The abscess disfigured his teeth and made it nearly impossible for him to eat. The vet and I agreed that he was just too old and too weak to risk putting under anesthetic for surgery so we gave him a few days to say good bye to his new baby brothers before having him PTS. My veterinary practice treats all animals the same, big or small, so they were happy to try and do everything they could within reason to make Teddy as comfortable as possible.
The vet noted that the surgery would've been fairly risky had Teddy been strong enough for it anyways. In his particular case the abscess was right under the gum and meant that they would've had to pull both of his upper incisors so that they could access and drain the abscess. That also meant that he'd likely have to be on soft foods for the rest of his life and would needly fortnightly check-ups to get his bottom teeth trimmed, and to make sure that his abscess didn't return.