Here’s one I have to say I am pretty pleased about! Lucky seems rather a sad name for this little 4 week old kitten that comes in from a rehoming centre where he has been left, just about blind. What is happening and what can be done to help him?
After 3 months and surgery to open up the adhered conjunctiva causing a symblepahron that has obscured the eye, here is Lucky, living up to his name and ready to be rehomed. Not a brilliant picture I know but I wanted to show you the advert rehoming him – you can see his eyes are fine now! The key to stopping the conjunctiva readhering is, in my opinion, the fact that we controlled his herpesviral infection with systemic Famvir at 30mg/kg. This is rather an empirical dose, 1/8th of a 125 tablet, the smallest one can get, but it seems to work. We could have used topical penciclovir, the antiviral which is produced as the breakdown product of the oral prodrug famciclovir, but the preparation available, Vectavir, stings in the ulcerated eye, so we didn’t use it in Lucky.