feline antibiotic

Antibiotics will not help with a crushing injury. Are you trying to treat the cat at home?

I am not trying to treat the cat at home. I am trying to ascertain if the emergency vet that initially treated my cat after the injuries I described made an obviously bad choice in antibiotics which nearly led to my cat's losing one leg.

Ok. Now I understand. What antibiotic did your vet prescribe?

I do not want to color your response with this information. In other words, I don't want you to critique what my vet did. I just want what will amount to a second professional opinion. Please just tell me what antibiotic, or class of antibiotic, you would deem to be most effective for this situation and why.

Thanks.

First, antibiotics would not be recommended for a crushing injury alone.

The antibiotics would have been prescribed to prevent infection of the open dog bite wounds.

There are a lot of possible antibiotics that come to mind. They might include but are not limited to:

• Albon
• Amoxicillin
• Baytril
• Clavamox
• Orbax

There are a lot more. If you have a specific one that you want to ask about, feel free to let me know.

I really doubt that the cat lost a leg due to the antibiotic that was given. Sometimes, this is the only feasable option with a crushing injury.

Let me know if you still have questions.

The cat did not lose a leg. The first vet prescribed Clavamox only. Apparently, this was sufficient to prevent infection from the dog bites, but did nothing to fight the anoxic bacteria that often accompanies crushing injuries. Thus, the leg, which was crushed, became infected and exhibited necrosis.

When I took the cat to a soft tissue specialist, I was told that Amoxicillin would have been their first choice because it is effective against anoxic bacterica. She stated that "experience" would have led the first doctor to the same conclusion.

The cat entered the 2nd vet with a 50/50 prognosis for the leg to survive, and I was given the choice of amputation or surgery to remove necrotic tissue. I opted to wait, and after 24 hours on amoxicillin, the cat was limping around, and two days later he was walking and there was 100% chance to keep the leg and a small possibility of minor surgery to come.

My problem is, I believe that the first vet made a mistake; at the very least he should have recognized his own limitations and consulted with the soft tissue specialist (which he ultimately did at my request which led to the referral to the 2nd vet), but I have nothing to go on other than the comment of the specialist who passed off the choice of Clavamox to the inexperience of the 1st vet. Inexperience seems like a pretty hollow excuse in light of the fact that the first vet is an emergency vet and so, presumably has encountered similar injuries in the past.

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