A kedvtelésből tartott nyulak fogászati eredetű és egyéb, következményes vagy párhuzamosan fennálló megbetegedéseinek vizsgálata

Abstract

Background: Rabbits are popular pet animals. Improper nutrition frequently leads to common diseases such as dental diseases, diarrhoea or other gastrointestinal diseases. Objectives: The study aimed to collect data from rabbits diagnosed with malocclusion or incisor malocclusion. Materials and Methods: Data were collected at the Exo-Pet Veterinary Clinic in Budapest, Hungary. The selected rabbits visited the clinic between 01.11.2022 and 01.09.2023. Only rabbits diagnosed with caudal malocclusion and/or incisor malocclusion were selected. Recorded data were the age, sex, breed, diagnosis, number of veterinary visits, and affected teeth. Fisher's exact test was used to evaluate the association between age (≤ 4 years old, > 4 years old), gender (male or female), and the number of diagnosed health problems (≤ 2 or more). Lower p-values than 0.05 were significant. Results and discussion: A total of 150 records were collected. Most of the rabbits were male (61.3%) and more than 90% of the rabbits were dwarf. More rabbits were diagnosed only with malocclusion (n = 114, 76.0%) and 36 (24%) had both malocclusion and incisor malocclusion. The least affected teeth were the upper-left (1.7% of the affected teeth) and upper-right (2.1%) cheek teeth no. 6, as well as incisors (3.2%). The most affected teeth were lower-right (6.5%) and upper-right cheek (6.3%) teeth no. 2. Twenty-six rabbits had dental abscesses and ten of them had surgery during the examined period. The most frequent other clinical signs of the rabbits besides dental disease were obesity (n = 19), epiphora (n = 14), and digestive disorders, such as gastrointestinal stasis syndrome and ileus (n = 10%). The only significant association was found between age and the number of diagnosed health problems (p = 0.01735) as older rabbits had more diseases. As previous studies showed front teeth were less affected by malocclusion than cheek teeth.