First ... WOW! What a great summary of antibiotic options.
Randy, Convenia is a new one on me and I would really, really like to hear more about it fromyou (and any others who have used it). I really, really like that it is an injection
and that it is a 3rd generation cephalosporin, both of which make me think it should have minimal GI side effects.
I have some questions on the original post (and I apologize in advance if this was covered somewhere else and I just didn't see it): What symptoms does your rabbit have that make you suspect pasteurella? Sneezing? Drippy eyes? Nasal discharge? If eye or nose discharge, is it wet and clear? Milky? Colored? Or ...?
How is your rabbit acting in general? Seeming just fine or "under the weather?" Would you consider appetite, "output", and activity levels normal or not?
How severe are the symptoms? How long have they been going on? Could its start have coincided with opening a new bag of food or box of hay (that is perhaps more dusty or just from a different source)? Or with turning on your furnace for the first time (I mention this one because it bothers me A LOT and some of my bunnies to a lesser extent).
I absolutely agree that you should have your bunny checked by a rabbit-savvy vet. The answers to the above questions, however, would influence what I would
personally expect froma vet appointment: whether I press for a C&S; whether I feel the need to come home with drugs at all; whether I'm comfotable with a newer or stronger antibiotic(because of severity of symptoms).
A few other things to consider:
- Culture/sensitivity results vary in "usefulness". We generally get very good results with ear cultures. Nasal cultures often come back inconclusive. A "deep nasal" culture is more likely to result in useful information, but can be stressful to collect ... and still may come back with questionable results.
- If you do opt for the C&S, ask if your vet to look into whether s/he can request that specific drugs be used in the sensitivity portion. As I understand it (and I may be wrong here), use a certain number of "dishes" to see if anything grows, then test each that shows growth with a separate antibiotic. The difficulty with rabbits is that most labs "waste" at least threesamples on amoxicillin, ampicillin, and clavamox, none of which can be given to rabbits.
- The more time I spend working in the pharmaceutical industry, the less sure I am that drugs are always necessary. You always have to balance the benefits against the potential side effects. Randy is certainly right about Baytril and Bactrim being used so much in rabbits that many bacteria are now resistant to these drugs. The flip-side for the newer/less-used drugs is what my husband's neurologist pointed out when he was one of the early patients to try a new MS drug 15 years ago: "Remember that the side-effects that occur only in 1/500 or 1/1000 patients may not have surfaced yet." What she didn't say (but I knew) was "... and often those are the life-threatening side-effects." It is OK to come home from a vet appointment with out drugs to give (in fact, my family thinks that is more than OK!).
- Another factorthat Dr. Allan and I now consider when somebunny's symptoms areminoris how much the particular bunny is stressed by the process of giving medication, since stress itself impairs the immune system. For minor symptoms in a bunny who really hates to be handled, she often sends me home with medication to start giving if the symptoms worsen. That allows me torelax so the bunny's own body can fight the infection. Often, I try offering (as treats) some herbs (echinacea and golden seal in leaf or cut root form) to help boost the immune system.
Ihave had several bunnies come through my home in the last 5-10 years who have had mild-but-chronic respiratory symptoms that did not respond to antibiotic treatment. After trying 2-3 antibiotics with only minor improvement, Dr. Allan and I have opted to just "watch." Oliver (who came to me at age 10) lived to be 13). Chip (who came to me at 5) is now 13.5 -- blind as a bat but still feisty.
Kathy Smith
I wrote some notes down.. So a culture and sensitivity test? Is this a test that my vet can do right then and there or does it need to be sent out? Also any clue as to about how much this will cost? 
