Wellness Case Study

Family Pet Clinic of Redondo Beach would like to reinforce the value of thorough wellness exams for your dogs and cats. Leo is a really sweet 5 year PitBull mixed breed dog. 

We recently performed a wellness exam on this nice boy. He had been doing very well according to his "mom" but she just wanted to make sure everything was okay with him. Leo is on oral medication for a chronic orthopedic issue and his mom is very proactive, which I love! Well, he looked happy and healthy overall, but I discovered pus draining into his mouth from a root abscess (pictured)! 

Leo did not show me that he was painful, but I am quite sure this must have been hurting him. We submitted pre-op lab work for complete dental cleaning under anesthesia so that we could take dental X-rays and extract the problem tooth. Once under anesthesia, we were able to see the fractured tip of the crown of the tooth that allowed for bacteria to enter into the root canal. 

The x-ray shows the large puddle of pus that had been trapped deep in the bone around the root tip. His root canal is also widely dilated and filled with pus. The extracted tooth was very diseased. The rest of his mouth cleaned up beautifully and Leo woke up with lots of excellent pain control on board and feeling really excellent! 

It turns out that Leo's dad throws a hard plastic frisbee for him... the hard plastic is the likely culprit that caused the damaged tooth in the first place.

Take-home points: Please bring your dogs and cats in to see the veterinarian for a thorough physical exam once or twice a year! Also, be careful with hard plastic toys!