2002 - 71 (1)

This paper describes an inguinal hernia in a 12-year-old gelding. The cause of the symptoms was not detected during clinical examination and the diagnosis was made during surgery. Most probably, the rarity of the condition was the underlying reason for this diagnostic failure.

A West Highland White Terrier was presented with several lesions on the mucocutaneous junctions as a result of demodicosis. The dog responded well to a treatment with cephalosporins and oral ivermectine.

Isospora suis causes neonatal coccidiosis in piglets. Clinical signs include diarrhoea in 5 to 14-days-old piglets. The morbidity is high and the mortality low to moderate. Up until now, no I. suis prevalence data have been available in Belgium. Therefore, 30 swine herds (10 litters/farm) were sampled in Flanders during the summer of 2000 to determine the prevalence and the importance of I. suis. On 24 of the 30 examined farms (80%) oocysts were present, with an average of 33% of the litters infected. On 4 of the 5 farms with obvious problems of diarrhoea an average of 47 % of the litters was infected. However, diarrhoea was not significantly correlated with the presence of I. suis infection or with the percentage of infected litters. The cleaning of the farrowing crate and the treatment of the sows (at parturition) with sulfonamids had no apparent effect on the occurrence of the infection, but the disinfection of the farrowing crates however had a significant effect on the percentage of infected litters.