ENTROPIO AND ECTROPIO

Entropio

This bad-formation shows inside for an inversion of the board palpebral. It can affect as much the superior eyelid as to inferior. The lashes or the hair (the inferior eyelid of the dog doesn't have lashes) in permanent contact with the cornea, they irritate her, provoking a to shed tears constant.

Three origins

The entropio can be congenital, reflex or acquired.

The congenital entropio is in numerous races, in matter in Chow Chow, Shar Pei, German Arm, English and American Cocker, Bulldogue and Labrador, among others. Tends in view the character racial marked good of this disease, an origin is attributed genetics possibly.

The entropio reflex, also called espástico, it is consequence of a violent ocular pain that provokes a blefaroespasmo, that is, a contraction of the muscle orbicular of the eyelids, causador of the closing of the eye. It can be due to an ulcer of the cornea, to the presence of a strange body in the eye, to a queratite or a chronic conjunctivitis.

The entropio acquired, rarer, be consequence of a surgery palpebral badly done or the prolongation of an entropio reflex that became irreversible.

Symptoms

Easy to describe, they separate in the following way:

• epífor or lacrimejamento;

• blefaroespasmo (contraction of the eyelids);

• inversion of the board palpebral;

• all the consequences at the level of the conjunctive and of the cornea, linked to the irritation, as the queratite, conjunctivitis, vemelhidão.

In any case, the diagnosis diferencial of the entropio reflex becomes difficult to establish. Actually, it is always delicate to determine the primitive process that created the entropio: conjunctive lesions or corneanas or then inversion of the eyelid, being able to the first ones be consequences of Monday and vice-versa. Like this, he/she becomes difficult to make the decision of operating or not.

The entropio can only be corrected by the surgery. All the known techniques have, for objective, to correct the inversion of the board palpebral in order to avoid traumatismos caused to the conjunctive and the cornea by the lashes and hair.

Soft method

Applied, especially, to the young dogs, because it can be waited that the stretching of the skin gets better during the growth and disappear the anomaly. It is what it happens, mainly, to Shar Pei, whose pleats decrease in the adult age. In this case, it is proceeded to the application of points of suture intrapalpebrais, to maintain the board of the distant eyelid of the cornea. This intervention be practice with local anesthesia.

Strong method

It consists of cutting out pieces ne it skins and later to stretch out the eyelid with several suture points to place it again in your place. Accomplished, necessarily, with general anesthesia, this delicate operation demands an instrumental of small proportions. In the serious cases, becomes indispensable to do several successive surgical corrections that necessitm of other interventions.

If everything runs well, at the end of more or less 2 weeks, the total regression of the symptoms is verified. During the cicatrization phase, it is placed in the dog a protection necklace to avoid that is hurt when scratching.

The necessidade  of running over it this technique depends on factors as different as the race and the gravity and the position of the anomaly of the pálpeba.

Ectropio

It is the inverse bad-formation of the entropio. The board palpebral, turned for the exterior, he/she stops protecting the conjunctive. The ectropio just affects the inferior eyelid. It can be congenital or acquired.

The congenital ectropio is observed mainly in dogs of soft skin, as San Bernard, Cocker and the Neapolitan Watchdog. Besides the characteristic sad eye, the clinical symptoms are a to shed tears united to the fact of the inferior eyelid not to arrive to retain the tear film and the redness of the conjunctive permanently exposed to the aggressions of the external middle.

The acquired ectropio is consequence of a scar that pulls on the inferior eyelid, he/she wants it is due to a traumatismo, wants because of a sobrecorreção in a surgical intervention of entropio.

Treatment

The surgical intervention is only imposed really in case of serious disease. Most of the animals gets used to live with a light ectropio. The operation, accomplished with anesthesia, it consists of elevating the inferior eyelid for several processes. The sutures of small size, fragile, should be protected during the time of cicatrization. In the complicated cases, entropio and ectropio can coexist, in matter in San Bernard and in Great dane: it is what calls her of ' diamond' eye, whose surgical correction becomes particularly difficult.

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