Glaucoma - or other swollen eye things...

[betty]

Hello.

Has anyone's gerbils ever had diagnosed or suspected glaucoma - and if so what were the treatment options offered/used?

Also, has anyone had a swollen eyeball in their gerbils who were diagnosed with something else - and what were the treament options for these. It would be good to get an overview of swollen eye ball conditions incase these are overlapping conditions but being given different treatments.

My vet was an eye specialist and has equipment that non-eye vets wouldn't normally have - like a miniature air puff pressure reader (my gerbils was off the scale sadly), so it is possible that swollen eyes are attributed to injury or tumour when they could be glaucoma - or vice versa.

Anyway, any comments could be very helpful here - so thanks in advance.

[LilyandDaisy]

I don't have anything helpful to add unfortunately, but I was curious, just how small is a miniature air puff pressure reader?

How is your gerbil doing now?

Glaucoma is considered to be common in dwarf hamsters, but I've never heard of anyone trying to treat it (sometimes eye removal is necessary). One of my dwarfs had what I originally thought was cataracts as they had white pupils, but one day one eye became swollen and then I thought it could be glaucoma. The swelling went down on that occasion and then she was fine until the evening before she died when her eye swelled up again. I found her dead in the morning but she was 2.5 years old as far as I know glaucoma is not life-threatening so maybe that was coincidental or maybe it wasn't glaucoma.

[betty]

Sorry, I missed this answer - thank you. And what a lovely dark coat she had...

So, the eye puffer has front attachments, so the vet put the teeniest attachment on the front to get the readings. We had a follow up appointment on Saturday and her pressure has dropped almost back to normal on this side now thank goodness. Will need to keep it lubed, but the vet thinks it will shrivel up into a non-functioning eye based on their reading around - or like you say - an enucleation.

She is getting a cloudiness to her eye colour, so I am keeping an eye on that, but reading around myself on other rodents assumes that it is non-fatal in of itself, but perhaps untreated, the pressure can affect surrounding blood vessels or brain tissue? I don't know yet.