Navigating corneal ulcers: Medical management vs. debridement

During an interview with Alex Sigmund, DVM, DACVO, ahead of his lectures at Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX), he shared with dvm360 when veterinary professionals should be treating ulcers with medical management and when cases call for corneal debridement. Through the interview, Sigmund explains the steps he takes to determine whether or not an ulcer is indolent, which determines if a debridement is necessary or not.

Below is a partial transcript

Alex Sigmund, DVM, DACVO: The only time that I'm doing a corneal debridement is that, if I am sure that it is an indolent or non healing ulcer. You can also hear them called SCCED ulcers, Boxer ulcers. These are all the same thing where these are superficial ulcers that just are really frustrating from the get go, and they just do not want to heal without kind of stimulating them to heal. So we want to look at features of those ulcers that would indicate to us that it's indolent. So number 1, it's superficial. They are always superficial. Number 2 is that it's an ulcer that's been lasting too long, and it's still superficial. And 3, we want to look for that loose tissue hanging out around the edges of the ulcer.