I am interested in this forum as my mother's 14 year old Jack Russell died after being given two injections, one of Vetergesic and the other a long acting antibiotic. The day before the vet saw her she had had a rumbling stomach and as this had happened on several occassions she was taken to the vet. The day she was seen, the day after the rumbling tum, she was 100% in herself. The vet still gave her the two injection. When she returned home she could not stand up properly and that night paced up and down, wimpering all night. She was taken back the next day and the vet kept her in. We were told the blood tests and xrays they did showed no problems apart from gas in the stomach. They said she was improving but then at 12.30am they phoned to say she had died. Her respiration was bad and despite being given oxygen her heart had given out.

We beleive she should not have had any medication without blood tests - why give antibiotics if they are not needed. We also think she could have been given too much Vetrgesic as 18 hours later she still could not stand up. She was in pain and had not slept for over 48 hours before she died. It seems too much of a coincidence that her sypmptons started within 30 minutes of being given the injections, especially as one was a tranquiliser and she looked completely spaced out after the injection.

Has anyone else experienced these problems? My concern is heightened by the fact she had breathing problems and we are trying to find out what drug they used to sedate her for the xrays. The dog was not that old in JR terms and was in very good health generally, full of energy and looking well and alert before she went to the vet. Why did the vet use any drugs when she did not know what, if anything, was wrong with the dog?

any help woudl be appreciated.

Please send me your e-mail address to walter.beswick@wanadoo.fr so that I may respond to you privately.

My 15 year old border collie was given this vetergesic yesterday along with a synulox antibiotic injection. She too had (and still has) the same symptoms within 30 mins of the drugs being administered.

She has whined all night and is still whining and it's been over 24hrs since she had the injections. She is still quite wobbly on her legs but does seem to have improved a little.

We took her to the vets because she wasn't eating very well but now she has an even worse appetite and we are struggling to get her to take fluids as well. Going to the vets yesterday definitely seems to have done more halm than good. I just hope she gets through it.

My vet too wants to give her x rays but I will be wary of letting them sedate her after hearing your story and the symptoms of your mum's dog being so similar to my dogs.

Hi,

Do you not think that a 15 year-old border collie showing these signs may be trying to tell you something?

I would certainly not inflict sedation and x-rays on her if she were mine.

W

Have you read the contra-indications for the drug on the Noah Compendium at
[www.noahcompendium.co.uk]

If it was a genuine adverse reaction you may wish to report it to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate using their standard report form which can be downloaded from their website. On receipt of your form a veterinary surgeon from the drug manufacturer will contact your vet to discuss what happened and possibily investigate why it happened.

Ian

I took my dog today as he is sufering with joint problems very bad arthiritis and the vet has given him vetergesic and cartrophen he is very unsettled and has been for the last 4 hours I am sorry to hear of your mums Jack Russell I hope my dog will be ok is is 12 and is a West Highland Terrier, he has got to go back next Weds and then for the next 3 weeks for further injections.

Rachel

I'm just looking at the receipt I got from the vets with the run down of medication. I am questioning it all, i found the Vetergesic and not looked any further yet but the symptoms you are describing were the same in my dog. She only went in for a dental,cleaning. She was letharigic and her pupils were big for over a week after the procedure. We thought she was going to die or I'd have to destroy her. She slept most of the time and limped a lot we had to carry her every where. She seems to have picked up a bit now but still limps. They said she'd had a bad reaction to the anaestetic and had to pull her out of it quickly. I will not let her have one again unless i have to let her go now. She is still not her normal self. I have been giving her miracle mixture which is helping. She is 14 yrs old but never acted her age up until now, it must have knocked her for six.

After reading my last invoice from my vets following the death of my greyhound i decided to find out what medication she was given. She was having a trouble laying down and getting out the back door, after being told i had to take her to the surgery i struggled to get her in the car, as she was a large dog. i was told she had a trapped nerve and she had to rest, no walks, stairs and slippery floors, she had 2 anti-inflammitory injections and 1 vetergesic, 1 had to go into the muscle which she found very painful, when i got home she seemed very spaced out panting a lot and what i can only decribe as dribbling, About 4 hours after i got her home she decided she wanted to go outside, I helped her both to go both out and back in to the house only for her to collapes on her way back to her bed and die. It really was that quick.

She was totaly different when i got her back from the vets, could this have been a reaction to the vetergesic injection she had?

I am sorry to hear about your loss

I doubt this was vetergesic, although some of the things you describe might be due to the drug, nothing relating to your dog's death is likely. The question here is much more 'what was really wrong with the dog?' and I suspect that whatever the answer to that question is , is the likely cause of the dog's death. Again I am sorry for your loss.

I know this thread is old but I'll add my story, a couple of days ago my 12 year old King Charles Spaniel began to cry mildly while he was sleeping for an hour of so, nothing to major but as a concerned owner I knew I had to take him in to the vet, it was a Saturday night so it was a heavtfy out of hours bills, they gave him a shot of Vetergesic and told me he would be fine, I took him home. 30 minutes later a minor whimper had become a full blown crying and pained panting, I immediately took him back to the same vet whom told me in a dismissive manor that is "MAY" be the Vetergesic and I'd have to wait 8 HOURS before it may wear off.

I waited up with my dog for 12 hours listening to his poor crying, he couldn't walk straight, he couldn't sleep he was just so pained, eventually my mother and I couldn't bare to see him in pain and had to have him put to sleep. This is from a dog that would never cry except under dire pain so you can imagine my anger when the vet had the nerve to suggest it was "Whimpering" I can assure you this was far from a whimper, the poor old boy had to be put to sleep the next day.

The Vet had the nerve to suggest that it was an underlying problem, so if thats true this Vetergesic not only increased the pain of whatever my dog was suffering, he did have bad joints, but the fact the vet feigned innocence in all of it while telling me it was purely on my dog and not on him is something I cannot stand, and after reading all of these stories I have to ask why is this product still being used when so many stories are the same.

I understand your loss and the upset that this has caused but I would be inclined to agree with your vet that there was an underlying problem. I can see no reason why vetergesic would result in euthanasia.

It is important to consider that what happened may have happened regardless of whether your dog had vetergesic or not. As a rule this is a very safe drug - I must have administered 10s of thousands of doses without any problems over my career. Unfortunately sometimes things do happen as a result of a drug but one must be careful to weigh up the real risk and with this drug it is extremely small. I am not saying that it was not the cause of your problems but the adverse reactions to this drug are not enough to advocate its withdrawal from the market. There are hundreds of drugs much more dangerous but we have to keep in mind that without them there would be very little absolutely safe treatment for anything.

with due respect MArk we have a repeated description of a drug reaction that is consistent. These effects may be specific for certain dogs without clear markers but this sounds like a cholinergic /anticholinesterase like reaction. Every case needs to be reported and vets warned. Look how long it took to know about Barbiturates and sight hounds and Wheaten terriers. Note also that studies have shown effects upon ach receptors in the pups of bitches given the drug.

RE NSAIDs and vetergesic. May be Mark you will let me know who sanctions the use of these drugs concomitantly when the drug manufacturers deem this practice as unsafe.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2011 05:33PM by MarkRicher.

I am adding my experience of Vetergesic to the ones above. My 14 year old lurcher died on Friday 5 hours after being given an injection of Vetergesic to relieve arthritic pain. Within about 10 minutes of the injection he began to pant heavily and after about half an hour his back end was sinking to the floor but he seemed unable to lie down or settle in any way. After an hour of this distressing behaviour I rang the surgery - the vet relayed the message via the receptionist that some dogs can become aggitated and disorientated for a while but will usually settle. My dog paced, panted and staggered for another two hours before finally collapsing. He became unconscious, though stupidly I thought it was a sedative effect, and after another couple of hours stopped breathing and died. I was totally shocked as before the injection there was no way he was anywhere near dying. I am convinced the injection triggered some kind of crisis in his body. I have told my vet about this who said it was more likely to be some underlying problem that we were not aware of, not the Vetgesic and he had never heard of any similar reaction to it. It is possible of course that at 14 my dog did have other unknown health issues but I am certain the injection triggered something awful inside his body. And after reading several forums on the subject of Vetergesic, I know others have experienced this type of reaction within a very short time of receiving the same drug. I think more research needs to be done to see if there are any circumstances that might predispose certain dogs to an adverse reaction of this type and if so, perhaps some kind of test could be used to identify risk. I do realise a balanced view needs to be taken as Vetergesic no doubt helps relieve pain in many thousands of dogs, whether I would have the nerve to allow it to be used on another dog of mine in the future, I don't yet know.

I would like to make some general comments here.

1: I make my comments independently and am not on the side of any drug companies - far from it, I have been very outspoken about the practices of drug companies generally and in no way seek to defend them.

2: I cannot allow either potentially libellous comments or pseudo-science to be published which does not address the issues correctly, or is a misunderstanding of the whole subject.

3: As far as drug reactions generally are an issue there is no doubt that some individuals will have adverse reactions to any drugs, that does not make them unsafe for general use as the incidence of side-effects must be weighed up against their potential benefits. For example aspirin would not get a licence under the current regulations! When considering adverse effects you must consider whether for instance the correct dose was administered, or whether there were contra-indications to the drugs use in a particular case. Vets are obliged to report any SUSPECTED adverse reactions to the VMD who licence medicines and these are followed up vigorously. Drugs have been withdrawn as a result.

4. As far as buprenorphine (vetergesic/temgesic) goes I would not be surprised to have administered hundreds of thousands of doses in my nearly 20 year career and have never seen any problems at all - this perhaps puts things in perspective.

5. I accept that there will have been adverse reactions - true ones in the view of the vet - and possible ones in the view of owners, but in many cases quoted the animals have had severe problems of another nature or have been old and undiagnosed illnesses may well have been to blame for the result observed.

6. The other thing one must consider is what other drug could have been given instead and would it have been any safer? In the case of buprenorphine, other opiates would be potentially more likely to result in adverse effects.

I do not wish to belittle any of the experiences of owners who feel their pet may have suffered from the use of buprenorphine but one must take an overall view of these type of things. If buprenorphine were withdrawn I can assure you that there would be a lot more complaints about the alternatives, all of which also have licences.

mark please point out what potentially libelous comments have been made,as for pseudo science you are seriously in error,the info given was part of a toxicology report sent to the vmd as a result of vetergesic and metacam being used together and the resultant consequences in that particular host.you see the vets blame the drug companies and the drug companies blame the vets and sitting in the middle is the poor old pet owner.i am saddened that you decided only to print a couple of lines and not the rest of the info so that the public can make an informed choice. as for the vmd and sarrs in your words the vet is obliged to report adverse reactions so that needs to change to bound by law to report adverse reactions.you may have administered hundreds or thousands of injections of vetergesic(buprenorphine) but i would suspect that would have been as a premed or post op analgesic as spc,s deem safe.
sadly the veterinary world seems to be plagued with mal-practice,i based my comment on the info provided by the rcvs on their website as to the not only number of complaints but the seriousness of the nature of those complaints and the increasing numbers being reported,a vet once said" when i started out there were about 5 complaints a year of mal practice now there are between 800 to a 1000 a year"; staggering statistics,may be now is the time for independent scrutiny.
if vets were dying at a rate of numbers equivalent to pets would you not think there would be an investigation so why not with pets.

Phil,

I cannot as you know print any POTENTIALLY libellous comments to point them out or otherwise. Second 'Ask the Vet' is there to advise owners not as a vehicle for campaigns about anything at all, which I wish to avoid. As to your comments regarding pseudoscience, the BSAVA Small Animal Formulary and the NOAH Compendium on data sheets do not indicate that concurrent use of the NSAIDs and buprenorphine should be avoided, infact suggest the opposite. This illustrates that your reading of the toxicology report and the comments you made previously which were not published regarding drug binding sites are a misinterpretation of the pharmacology of these drugs. As to reporting this is a RCVS rule and as such is legally binding.

As I said above I wish this site to give a balanced view of things to owners, not some dramatised campaign platform for people who, probably quite genuinely, believe certain things to be true. As far as your comments about the disciplinary process go I think I will leaves these alone - res ipso loquitur.

My beautiful Waddadli was taken away from us after A SEVERE ALLERGIC REACTION to this BL--DY drug - Walking and eating in the morning and dead by the evening - I think we can safely say this drug is dangerous we will be taking our case to court as we think it was 100% to blame for my poor darling girl suffering for four hours so unnecessarily and WE ARE SO SO LOST WITHOUT HER



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2011 06:52PM by MarkRicher.

I have just received a breakdown from the vets bill and note our 2 year old Labrador was prescribed this and Rimadyl.
We woke up about 4 weeks ago to find her paralysed on the hall floor. The vet diagnosed a blood clot on her spine and she was kept in over the weekend and when we collected her on the Monday the recovery was remarkable. She looked almost her old self and we were told to walk her steadily for around 4 weeks before letting her off the lead again. Maybe as all things we should get this into perspective. Humans sometimes react to drugs but they can tell you if they are felling unwell, sadly dogs cant so it may be sensible however hard it is not to condemn the drug so it gives people more anxiety if they see it has been prescribed. My dog was let of the lead today for the first time and went ballistic with no side effects at all.

What you describe is a fibrocartilagenous embolism (a piece of an intervertebral disc blocks a blood vessel in the spine. It is common in this breed and the remarkable recovery is to be expected in a few days after the event.

I read with interest the previous comments on this thread but fear it has become abit of a witch hunt with people looking for something to blame for the sad loss of their pet. Having not studied the whole thread but going through it quickly it would appear that all the people commenting that their dog died due to vetergesic were all certainly senior if not old and sick/ill anyway, I would suggest that it is far more likely they did have underlying problems rather than a reaction to vetergesic. It would be of more concern if an otherwise healthly animal that had had vetergesic as part of their premedication prior to a routine surgery such as neutering had then collapsed and died. For all those people who lost their pets, I'm sorry for your loss but if your pets were neutered they would almost certainly have had vetergesic previously in their life and no reaction.

To ad to this topic: I took my 3.6kg Yorkie to the vet as he was suffering from colic, he was uncomfortable and has had this before. The vet said he would administer a pain killer and I assumed it would be what he's had in the past, a form of buscopan for dogs which has always worked with no adverse effects. Within 20 minutes my yorkie was unable to walk, and was salivating hugely. We stayed up with him overnight, and 10 hours later he is still a bit groggy, but still has colic. It's my fault for not asking what was going to be injected.