What to Do About Drug Poisoning in Pigs? Diagnosis and Treatment of One Case

Onset of disease

On September 17, 2008, a farmer, Mr. Yang, from Baiyun District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, came seeking treatment because 25 growing pigs weighing 25 kg to 30 kg had developed drug poisoning. Mr. Chen reported: because the weather had turned cold, the pigs in the whole pen generally had severe coughing, so on the afternoon of September 16 he went to the local veterinary drug store to buy medicine for treatment. When choosing the drugs, he did not consult the store's veterinarian and arbitrarily selected 5 injectable drugs: high-potency lincomycin, procaine penicillin, aminophylline, analgin, and kanamycin. After returning to the pig farm, he directly mixed these injectable drugs together and injected 20 ml into each pig. Not long after the injection, all the pigs began to vomit. By the morning of September 17, 3 pigs had already died, and several others were barely breathing.

Clinical symptoms

On the morning of September 17, the author accompanied the anxious Mr. Yang to the pig farm and found that the pigs were depressed, vomiting severely, and the vomit had already turned green; their pupils were constricted, they were anorexic, and even after taking a small amount of feed or water they immediately vomited. Some had complete loss of appetite, some had diarrhea, difficulty breathing, muscle spasms, unsteady standing, swaying when walking, stiff and weak limbs, slow responses, and some died in a coma.

Pathological changes

A pig that had just died was dissected, revealing a soft myocardium, a yellowed liver surface, green contents in the stomach, and, because it had not eaten for more than ten hours, thin intestinal walls filled with gas.

Treatment and results

Each pig was given an intravenous injection of 50 ml of 10% glucose injection, once every 1 hour, to protect the liver of the poisoned pigs and speed up detoxification. Pigs with muscle spasms were injected with 1 ml of 0.1% epinephrine hydrochloride, and pigs that were vomiting were injected with 3 ml of 1% atropine sulfate. In addition, care and monitoring were strengthened to promote recovery, the pig house was kept quiet and clean, and 500 ml of pig-use Vitoli was mixed with 1000 L of water using 5% glucose water for the pigs to drink freely. Pigs with a slight appetite were fed a small amount of green, juicy feed and a small amount of rice. After the above measures, by the afternoon of the 17th the pigs' mental state had all improved somewhat, their appetite had also recovered somewhat, and fewer pigs were vomiting and having spasms. Two days later, the pigs had basically returned to normal.

Summary

When some drugs are mixed, physical and chemical interactions can cause discoloration, turbidity, precipitation, and crystallization, reducing efficacy or poisoning animals, resulting in drug incompatibility, bringing adverse effects to sick animals, and directly causing economic losses. In this accident, Mr. Yang did not know that several of these drugs were incompatible: aminophylline is incompatible with lincomycin and procaine penicillin, and lincomycin and penicillin are also contraindicated for mixing. Yet after mixing these drugs, Mr. Yang saw the turbidity but thought there was no problem and still injected them directly. After the turbid medicinal liquid entered the pigs' bodies like a poison, through absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion, it damaged the body's tissues and physiological functions, leading to the drug poisoning incident in the pigs, and the measures taken were not timely enough, causing unnecessary losses.

Every medicine has some toxicity; when drugs are used improperly, they become poisons. Therefore, when using drugs, they should be combined scientifically and reasonably. If drug poisoning occurs, measures should be taken immediately to reduce losses.