Corneal ulcers: Common misconceptions

During an interview with dvm360 prior to his lectures at the Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX) conference, Alex Sigmund, DVM, DACVO, known as "The Eye Guy" on social media, shared with listeners some of the common misconceptions that he comes across when discussing corneal ulcer treatments, including some surrounding the use of antibiotics and what their impact is on patients. Throughout the interview, Sigmund debunks these common mistaken truths and provides insight into the reality of the treatment.

Below is a partial transcript:

Alex Sigmund, DVM, DACVO: I think in general, antibiotics do not heal ulcers. Ulcers will heal themselves. The antibiotic is really just there as a prophylactic therapy to help prevent infection, just because dogs are very, very prone to getting infected ulcers compared to humans, you know, as comparison. And so if that ulcer is again, you know, a week later and it's still there. We don't necessarily have to change our antibiotic because it may still be a superficial maybe now it's an indolent ulcer. There's no infection, so that antibiotic is still doing its job. So we don't need to just keep changing antibiotics just because it's not healing unless we have identified that the current antibiotic did not prevent infection and now we need to switch to one that is going to treat a current infection.

So I think there's a misconception that just adding an antibiotic isn't going to hurt anything, and it doesn't really matter what type of antibiotic that we choose, but it does in the long term, because we only have so many topical antibiotic choices in veterinary medicine, and resistance is fast coming upon us