Struvite crystals vs oxalate help!!

Please help!! my 5 yr old male cat was diagnosed with struvite crystals approximately 3 mos. ago. We switched his food to Hills S/D and for the past month Royal Canin SO. He still continues to have significant amount of blood in his urine, and continues to urinate outside of his litter box. I love my baby to death but this has got to stop. How long does it usually take to dissolve the crystals?? Am I just being impatient? Or could it be that he doesn't have the struvite crystals at all but the oxalate kind? They could not get enough of a urine sample to actually find the crystals when they originally diagnosed him. Is surgery my only other option at this point?
Anyone with past experience please help!

Originally Posted by h82bya

Please help!! my 5 yr old male cat was diagnosed with struvite crystals approximately 3 mos. ago. We switched his food to Hills S/D and for the past month Royal Canin SO. He still continues to have significant amount of blood in his urine, and continues to urinate outside of his litter box.

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have you been in contact with your vet during this whole time? (the whole 3 months that he has continued to have blood in his urine?) if not, PLEASE call your vet ASAP. in my experience my cats' crystals cleared up relatively quickly (the recommended time on Hill's s/d diet to dissolve them), but that was just with my cats...every cat is different.

my raven has the cat version of interstitial cystitis (which took quite a few years to properly diagnose). i have been able to manage it through diet for the last year, but it has been a lot of trial and error. this started for raven when he was around 2 yrs old, and he's now 8 yrs old. we never had to resort to surgery, but like i said, it's been alot of trial and error and working with many different vets.

if you have been in contact with your vet, and kitty has had blood in his urine for 3 months...my suggestion is see another vet (a second opinion), a cat specialist if possible. i wish you luck, FLUTD is so tough to deal with because it is so different for every cat.

editted to add:
my cats had struvite crystals...raven and nabu have been crystal free since 2000, and stimpy has been crystal free since 2002 (he was blocked before we adopted him).
you can also check out the cats with FLUTD group on Yahoo Groups. there are alot of people with extensive experience with FLUTD and their cats. also there are some people with experience with the calcium oxalate stones. i can't help you with that, as my cats have only have struvites.

I have a female persian mix who has oxalate crystals. She has to have a special diet plus surgery to remove the crystals about every 1 1/2 years. I would go back to the vet and if they couldn't conferm struvite crystals I'd go with the surgery. It sounds like you cat is in a lot of pain. Keep us posted on what happenes.

My 2yr old kitty was also diagnosed with struvite crystals 2wks ago. It's a long story but we think she's been having problems for a whole year now. Anyhow, we gave her antibiotics for these 2 wks and at this morning's check up, she still had blood in the urine. The vet never discussed the remainder of the results so I'm not sure if she still has crystals or not. But she's on another antibiotic for another 2wks. In the meantime, should I also ask the vet about diet and types of food? Do those foods really work? What if my cat still has blood in the urine after these next 2wks? Is it the crystals that cause the blood in the urine? Or is it just infection? Can it really be a UTI if the antibiotics didn't work these past 2wks?

yes, with struvite crystals you can and should treat them with a special food. It changes the acidity of the urine so that they can dissolve and pass them. The blood in the urine comes from the crystals scraping the surface of the bladder. They may or may not have a urinary infection. My vet put my cat on an antibiotic for the first 2 weeks as well, just in case, even though an infection was not detected in the uranalysis. From everything I have read, these crystals are the beginning of a nightmare!

I agree, back to the vet. You need to confirm which kind of crystals. I've had one male cat with calcium oxalate crystals - he had to have surgery to remove the stones that had formed in his bladder. He is now being managed via diet.

The cause of calcium oxalate is exactly the opposite of what causes struvite...I would think the ph of the urine alone would help them differentiate between the two (one forms from too acidic urine, one from urine not acidic enough as I recall).
Good luck with solving this, poor fellow

Shenandoah and Humble went to the vet for something else and it turns out they have crystals! I am scared! I took them in for something else: loose bowels. The xray determined that they had the crystals. Vet is giving antibiotics and is keeping them there. I miss them. I live alone but for my angels. PLEASE PRAY IT IS OK!

They are sending it all off to determine what kind of crystals they are.

I am really getting freaked.

You definitely need to find out exactly what is going on. If you treat for struvite crystals but he actually has calcium oxylate crystals, it will make the problem much worse.

A return trip to the vet would be the thing to do at this point. 3 months of continuing blood in the urine is very abnormal. It is also possible that he does not have crystals at all but actually has interstitial cystitis, which is totally different (and very painful, but also treatable and not dangerous).

umm I will just get in line to say time to sit down with vet and get the whole story.. I am foogy on which cystal is which but one is often alleviated by many commercial diets yet the other is a Rx for life issue and often sugery

I am jumping to conclusions and will hopefully find out stuff tomorrow.

I read that only 2% of bladder issues are bacterial in nature. See another vet.