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- Nov 2, 2022
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We are looking for some advice about a recurring issue our CKD cat has been having. Every few months she seems to get an initial UTI (blood in urine, frequent urination) which is validated by a urine culture (E. coli). However, it’s been the pattern that she'll get the same symptoms about a month after we finish two weeks of antibiotics. The second time, the culture will be negative. Her most recent culture, collected on 8/6, was positive for E. coli.
Because of this pattern, the ER vet suggested we try 4-6 weeks of antibiotics instead of 2 when the symptoms recurred last week. The thinking is that it may be an embedded UTI that evades the first round of antibiotics, either hiding in her bladder walls or some debris he noticed (she had some kidney stones that didn't show up in her last ultrasound at the end of May, I'm wondering if the debris remaining from that).
However, we were warned by our local vet that the antibiotic we started, Baytril, can damage kidney enzymes with prolonged use. We also saw online that it can cause blindness. Ideally we would like to try the extended course to eliminate the possibility of the recurring UTI, but we obviously don't want to worsen her CKD or cause her to go blind. We know it’s a lot of antibiotics, but so is having to do another two-week course every few months due to recurrence. She's already done two weeks of Clavamox and ten days of Baytril in the past. Our other regular internal medicine vet believes it isn’t an embedded infection but rather sterile cystitis (feline idiopathic cystitis- FIC). Ultrasounds for our cat have also looked relatively good, so she recommended not rechecking ultrasound, especially since she said UTIs and FIC can both cause thickened bladder walls.
To provide more context, Tikka also has SCL/IBD and takes chlorambucil and prednisolone, which is likely lowering her immune defenses and leading to UTIs. That won’t be changing anytime soon. She also had high creatinine in one of the last few tests, but in the most recent test, her values were within the reasonable range but at the very cusp of the high end of normal.
Because of this pattern, the ER vet suggested we try 4-6 weeks of antibiotics instead of 2 when the symptoms recurred last week. The thinking is that it may be an embedded UTI that evades the first round of antibiotics, either hiding in her bladder walls or some debris he noticed (she had some kidney stones that didn't show up in her last ultrasound at the end of May, I'm wondering if the debris remaining from that).
However, we were warned by our local vet that the antibiotic we started, Baytril, can damage kidney enzymes with prolonged use. We also saw online that it can cause blindness. Ideally we would like to try the extended course to eliminate the possibility of the recurring UTI, but we obviously don't want to worsen her CKD or cause her to go blind. We know it’s a lot of antibiotics, but so is having to do another two-week course every few months due to recurrence. She's already done two weeks of Clavamox and ten days of Baytril in the past. Our other regular internal medicine vet believes it isn’t an embedded infection but rather sterile cystitis (feline idiopathic cystitis- FIC). Ultrasounds for our cat have also looked relatively good, so she recommended not rechecking ultrasound, especially since she said UTIs and FIC can both cause thickened bladder walls.
To provide more context, Tikka also has SCL/IBD and takes chlorambucil and prednisolone, which is likely lowering her immune defenses and leading to UTIs. That won’t be changing anytime soon. She also had high creatinine in one of the last few tests, but in the most recent test, her values were within the reasonable range but at the very cusp of the high end of normal.
