Back from the pet Emergency Room...MOJO may be dying!

[H_T_]

everyone just remember to read the label carefully, and watch out for the water thing. i'm not sure how far away it has to be.

 

[gotmojo]

http://spiders.ucr.edu/expert.html

Quotes From A Missouri Physician Who Specialized
In Brown Recluse Spider Bites
Below are quotes taken from an article by Dr. Phillip Anderson published in the journal, Missouri Medicine. Dr. Anderson was one of only a handful of practicing clinicians in the U.S. whose specialty was brown recluse spider bites, so his opinion is authoritative. He was a university physician specializing in dermatology, in particular on the effects of brown recluse spider bites from Missouri, which is in the heart of the range of the brown recluse, where they are very abundant.

The quotes from the review article below were generated from the experience of examining and studying over 1,000 probable recluse bites over 30 years time. If these quotes ruffle your feathers, then you really need to reconsider whether the source of your information has more experience that Phillip Anderson. That is very unlikely.

(No attempt is made to translate the medical terms in layman English. This would obscure valuable information for any medical person accessing the site. If you are truly interested in knowing all the terms, get Taber's Medical Dictionary for translation from Doctorese to English. One hint: Loxoscelism = necrotic wound attributed to brown recluse spider bite).

Anderson, Phillip, C. 1998. Missouri brown recluse spider: a review and update. Missouri Medicine 95: 318-322.

"The entire loxoscelism literature is deficient in failing to produce the evidence that the bite of the Loxosceles reclusa was the cause of the illness reported."

"The spider must be recovered on the site promptly and identified expertly. Clinical impression alone, without other physical evidence, is not sufficiently convincing."

" the early clinical literature about loxoscelism is almost useless."

". several deaths from loxoscelism were reported in medical journals, but none of the reports is convincing. We are not aware of any verifiable deaths caused by the bite of the North American brown recluse spider."

"Almost all brown recluse spider bites heal nicely in two to three months without medical treatment at all. Also the long-term medical outcome is excellent without treatment."

"In my opinion, early debridement without closure or grafting also results in delayed healing, more scarring, and without relief of pain or reduction in risks."

"Systematic loxoscelism is uncommon, especially in adults."

"We estimate that we have seen or reviewed about 1,000 credible recluse spider bites, and we have seen about a dozen cases of impressive, sustained hemolysis."

"It would be fair to estimate that systemic loxoscelism occurs in much less than 1% of cases of focal necrosis of the skin due to loxosotoxin."

".the prime credo for the physician is to consider necrotizing cutaneous infection as the first diagnosis whenever you recognize focal necrosis in skin. Consider loxoscelism only after excluding infection."

"All medically significant recluse spider bites have central necrosis, that is, all of them are seen initially as central sinking blue-gray macules on the skin with a wide halo of mixed erythema and vasoconstriction (red-white-blue). If the central lesion is urticarial or nodular, another kind of injury is involved, not a recluse spider bite. Elderly people with diabetes, chronic liver disease, or alcoholism most often appear with spontaneous necrotizing fasciitis, while healthy children and young adults are the usual patients with loxoscelism."

"..cutaneous loxoscelism is a focal, single necrotic lesion without adenopathy or lymphangitis early, not exudative, not progressive after about 18-24 hours, and associated with only mild fever or toxicity in almost all cases. The patients do not seem very ill."

"Most recluse bites referred to us arrive already on high-dose antibiotics. We have never encountered an infected bite, even in unmedicated patients. Antibiotics are unnecessary, and may lend to a false sense of security or even induce errors in the proper diagnosis of cellulitis. It is best not to use antibiotics except for the credible diagnosis of infection, as against loxoscelism."

"Coagulopathy in adults from an ordinary spider bite is almost never seen."

"With no physician's care at all, most recluse spider bites show an excellent outcome."

"Healing may be slow, but all lesions heal and mostly with a minimum of scarring. Surgery can offer little or nothing more. No medications are required to treat brown recluse spider bites."

1. I am assuming you posted this as an informative tool based on the threads topic. Not to discount anything actually posted here.

2. Why would my feathers get ruffled?

3. I saw this post this morning and printed a copy to bring with me to get MOJO. My Vet looked at it and said..."Yup, then pointed to 2 shelves of reference books including one that had the majority of Anderson's actual medical study information in it, as well as Toxicologist Findlay Russell, MD, the World's foremost leading expert on venomous animals and insects including the reclusehe's a colleague of Anderson's BTW. My Vet then said "Quotes on medical case studies are fine, but Quotes fail to provide key info. on the actual study, such as age, patients overall normal health, lab work status, time line of bites, etc...and in your case...most importantly of all, SPECIES."

I was then told that "we are dealing with a cat, a family pet. Those quotes are from studies done on for the most part presumeably healthy human adults, not a family pet. Although, a lot holds true for cats because cats can endure a great deal of pain and are very resiliant, it is still a cat and they are as different from each other healthwise as humans are." Now it seemed my Vet was getting pissy when I was told, "I am not discounting Anderson's credibility because we would not know a lot of info. if it were not for him, but, I have been treating approx. 30 or so of these bites each year on cat's alone for the past 36 years and that doesn't count the # of dogs that i've treated, the # of dogs treated is low, more like 4 - 5, (Hmmmm, that's 1224 bites treated.)this big difference is because cat's see spiders and tend to play with them before eating them, so they escalate their chances of being bitten." And then, "In all that time I have never seen a death due to the actual bite in and of itself. However, I have seen deaths that were a result of allergic reactions to the bite, just like allergic reactions to bee stings they vary in intensity and therefore must be treated as it is life threatening regardless because an animal cannot comunicate certain things with us as far as how much something is affecting them. This is the case with MOJO, he actually had a reaction as a result of the bite that was sending him into shock, most other cats will not have that reaction, and the more venom that could have been introduced the greater the reaction would have been.", "That is the information that gets left out of "quotes", the internet is one of the most powerful tools there is, but you have to know how to use the info. it gives you, just like, you can give someone the best power saw on the market but that saw by itself won't make them a master carpenter. Unless the person knows exactly how to use the saw in a safe and smart way they will probably wind up losing a thumb.", "Anyone can post quotes off the internet without having all of the info. on a specific situation but guess what, those quotes wouldn't have saved MOJO's life if you read that before bringing him in. And i'm positive Dr. Anderson would agree with me on that.", " A little knowledge is dangerous, sometimes things just need to be left to people qualified to handle them, I may not be an expert with my name on books but I treat the bites just the same."

So now i'm dealing with a Vet with an attitude.

Anyway MOJO is home now and seemingly fine with his new girl friend. You know you could have posted anything about this, the fact is I had a broken cat and took him somewhere to get fixed and they fixed him.

I think certain things can cause people to take things too lightly sometimes, I don't care, I would rather worry and be safe than not.

I appreciate it though, Good stuff.

MOJO

 

[gotmojo]

That's great bro you helping out by getting one of those kittens. I wish people would spay and neuter there pets so we wouldn't have this problem. Good to hear mojo's getting better.

I was actually planning on it for a while now, so I guess this was just the right time.

 

[gotmojo]

Ah, I'm so happy he is coming home and with another little soul to love, too. =-)

Now he can stop humping peoples feet....I hope!

 

[gotmojo]

Cool! What color is the kitten?

They called it "dish rag" but it's like diff patches of grey, orange, yellow and some brown over a white coat.

A mutt I guess.

 

[gotmojo]

They called it "dish rag" but it's like diff patches of grey, orange, yellow and some brown over a white coat.

A mutt I guess.

Thanks again all!!!

 

[HiDnGoD]

Based on the vet's reaction, I'd send his wife a bouquet of flowers in thanks. You know, make him happy too.

 

[gotmojo]

Based on the vet's reaction, I'd send his wife a bouquet of flowers in thanks. You know, make him happy too.

I don't follow?

I don't think he actually had a bad reaction. He was noticeably annoyed for sure, but to be honest, I really don't blame him. He was an M.D. before becoming a Vet. so you have all the years of education combined for those two professions, I think he said 5 years as a general practitioner, and 36 as a Vet, so he's definately paid his dues with close to 50 years (My #'s may be off by 1 or 2 as I am going by my memory.) of education and professional experience combined. Only to have some guy (me) bring a page of quotes from the internet that another guy posted into his office.

Shit, he probably felt that was kind of a slap in the face even though I didn't mean it in that respect, but he didn't know that.

So, no I don't blame him, but I sure as hell do respect him!

MOJO

 

[Gambino]

we are pulling for mojo in the midwest