Understanding emergency conditions in exotic animals

S. Emi Knafo, DVM, DACZM is a zoological medicine specialist and assistant clinical professor of zoological medicine at the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville. In a dvm360 interview, she discussed treating exotic companion animals such as rabbits, reptiles and birds, as well as zoological medicine, sharing the types of conditions and injuries that can be emergency cases requiring immediate care and, in some instances, referral to an exotics or zoological specialist. In this part of the video series from the interview, Knafo addresses the signs in an exotic animals that their patient’s condition is an emergency situation.

The following is transcript of the video:

dvm360: What are some emergency conditions that are commonly seen with exotic animals?

S. Emi Knafo, DVM, DACZM: Probably the most common thing that we see is GI stasis, or GI syndrome in rabbits and guinea pigs and chinchillas, all the hindgut fermenters, which is a syndrome. It's not a specific disease. It's kind of a collection of symptoms. But it's really just [that] they're not eating, they're not pooping as normally as they should be, and that can lead to dehydration, and it can kind of snowball into potentially fatal presentation. And so, it can be as mild as a little upset stomach, they're not eating quite as much, or they haven't eaten at all in several days, and they're potentially septic or obstructed and need to go into the critical care unit. So we say, ‘GI syndrome.’ It really runs the gamut of how severe that could be and that is probably the most common thing we see the small mammals for.

We see a lot of birds for either trauma, like broken wing, broken leg, attack by dog in the house, or sometimes just not doing well. We get the sort of nebulous bird that sort of fluffed and maybe still eating but not quite as much or regurgitating. And then, true emergency would be like respiratory distress, things like that.

For our reptiles, we [say] that like there's very few true life threatening reptile emergencies, because they do everything very slowly. But there are a couple. Usually it's like not eating [or] constipation—they haven't gone to the bathroom in a long time. None of those things on their face seem like they need to come in emergently, but usually it's like they haven't done this for several weeks or months. And so now we're at a kind of a tipping point where they're in a critical period.

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