"Mary" wrote in message
...
They used to give cats baytril or something I think. It's not
approved for cats. They no longer prescribe it because it can cause
blindness.
Some vets still don't know this! I think it was baytril, could be
something
else so don't quote me here.

Yes, I'm quite sure you're thinking of Baytril, however AFAIK, this isn't
true.

There was a HUGE thread about Baytril quite a while ago - a year & a half to
a couple of years ago, maybe? It can cause eye probs, incl. blindness (but
also incl. much less severe eye probs), but only *if* the dosage exceeds the
recommended dosage. The recommended dosage is 5 mg per kilogram of body
weight per day. Baytril is a potent drug, & is usually reserved for use
after a first, or even 2nd, antibiotic fails to be effective.

After the huge discussion about it had taken place here, I asked one of my
vets about his use of Baytril & Orbax (a similar drug preferred by some); he
said that he uses both of them almost exclusively as a 2 or 3rd line of
defense. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, in which he may decide
that Baytril or Orbax is preferable & needed as the first drug of choice.
He knew of no cat that has gone blind due to the use of Baytril at its
recommended dosage. When we (here) tried to find an instance where a cat
had gone blind on Baytril at its recommended dosage, all we ever found after
much digging was a study in which one older cat (16 yrs. old, IIRC) who'd
gone blind. Otoh, there were no details provided by the study; IOW, it was
possible that the cat was hypertensive to begin with & was blind as a result
of its high blood pressure - no clue as to the actual cause.

One of my cats was on Baytril, along w/ 3 other drugs, for over 4 years - it
greatly helped her. (She had a chronic liver problem.) She was on another
antibiotic at first, but it was not helping, so the vets - specialist
(internist/oncologist) along w/ the regular vet - switched her over to
Baytril. Another one of my cats was on it for a couple of weeks about 3
years ago, when the first line of defense antibiotic didn't clear up his
UTI. Baytril worked.

Cathy

--
"Staccato signals of constant information..."
("The Boy in the Bubble") Paul Simon