| dc.description.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. | en_US |
