PART 3
Bites from any type of animal
Bleeding that cannot be stopped within a few minutes of the injury
Broken limbs (both when the bones poke through the skin, as well as when there is a
unilateral swelling and favoring of one limb)
Bulging eyes (may be accompanied by drooping lower eye lids)
Deeply sunken eyes
Extreme lethargy (not related to improper temperatures or hypothermia)
Hemipenal or cloacal prolapse
Paralysis, full or partial
Seizures
Swollen neck and/or dewlap
Because emergencies often occur outside of your reptile veterinarian's regular office hours, you should know, long before you ever need one, the name, phone number, and actual location of the emergency veterinary hospitals in your area that can treat reptile patients. Not all such hospitals want to deal with reptiles because the staff and veterinarians don't like them or have
enough experience to even feel comfortable making a tentative diagnosis and stabilizing the animal until the client can get to their regular veterinarian. The time to find out that the emergency hospital closest to you doesn't "do" reptiles is not when your iguana is bleeding nonstop or is lethargic and apparently has stopped breathing.
A Note On Blood and Bleeding
It is estimated that blood accounts for between 5 to 8 percent of a reptile's body weight. Reptiles can generally loose up to 10 percent of their blood volume before going into shock.
Most iguanas, even healthy ones, have some degree of chronic dehydration. This means that a healthy captive iguana has somewhat less blood volume by weight than a similarly sized wild iguana. If you can't get the bleeding stopped within a very short time, get to the veterinarian right away. There is no way to state how much time, as the length of time is going to vary based on the size of the iguana and what his starting blood volume was before the bleeding started.
Non-Emergent Veterinary Care
There are conditions for which you need to get to the veterinarian much sooner than waiting for your iguana's annual appointment, but for which you don't need to go racing out of your house in your pajamas at midnight on Saturday night. You do need to call your veterinarian's office the first day after it is open and make an appointment to get in to see the veterinarian within the next day or so.
Abscesses (dry or oozing lumps anywhere on the body, limbs, digits, tail, head/neck)
Bilateral swelling of lower jaw and/or hind legs
Bumps/Lumps along spine and tail
Constipation (not resolved by correcting temperatures and a bath with massage)
Favoring any limb or body part with no signs of swelling
Females entering breeding season (get that serum calcium checked!)
Oozing or crusty lesions or lumps
Small black patches larger than one scale in size
Smelly feces
Abnormal snappy or irritated behavior
Swollen joints
Tail that is swollen, mush and/or oozing, or drying out and collapsing in on itself
Twitches and tremors, serial, intermittent (not the occasional benign single myoclonic twitch or jerk)
Urates thickened, reddish or orangey (not associated with breeding season)
There is a wide range of microorganisms that can cause a wide range of signs and symptoms. Until you have several years to learn what is normal for iguanas and what is not, take your iguana to your veterinarian. If you post these signs and symptoms on Internet message boards or email lists, the experienced people probably can give you a good idea of what the diagnosis is. They will, however, always add that you need to get your iguana to the veterinarian for a proper diagnosis and treatment. Don't try to treat any of these or other conditions at home, on your own or with information you are unable to adequately assess.
Iguanas, like most other essentially wild animals, hide pain and illness as long as they can. By the time most humans realize something might be wrong, things are usually very wrong. If there is any doubt, any question, any concern, don't wait: investigate!
Important Iguana and Human Health Concerns
As iguanas have been imported in ever increasing numbers, and have been selling ever more cheaply, they are usually much sicker by the time they reach the pet store. Ten years ago, the incidence of mites on an iguana was almost unheard of. Now, mite- and tick-infested iguanas are all too common. Pet store remedies do not work and pesticides must be used with extreme caution. If you do have mites, please read the article on Reptile Mites to find out how to go about treating your iguana and its enclosure, and the pros and cons of some of the commonly recommended products.
Another health problem affects both the iguanas and their humans. Several years ago, there were only scattered reports of Salmonella-infected people who picked up the Salmonella organism from their iguana. Again, due to the increasing numbers and correspondingly poor conditions in which the pet trade maintains these lizards, Salmonella has risen dramatically. Salmonella is of especial concern to pregnant women, newborn babies, infants and toddlers, the elderly, and anyone with a compromised immune system, cancer, and HIV/AIDS. Strict disinfection must be done, and contact with new animals limited to persons not vulnerable to infection until such time as the new iguana has stabilized and is healthy (a healthy reptile can still have Salmonella but may be less likely to excessive numbers of the organism).
Since iguanas (or other pets) who have Salmonella may not shed the organisms every time they defecate, a fecal exam to test for Salmonella may give false negatives. Talk to your veterinarian about doing blood tests for Salmonella detection. If your iguana is otherwise healthy but tests positive for Salmonella, knowledgeable veterinarians and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that they not be treated with drugs to try to eradicate or reduce the level of Salmonella. Treating iguanas who are not actually sick from the Salmonella will lead to antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella. That will increase the health risk to humans as the same or similar antibiotics are used in humans as are used an iguanas.
(Taken from:
http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Con...=4&SourceID=59)
