PANCREATIC ABSCESS, SUPPURATIVE PANCREATITIS.
A complication of strangles or purulent infection. Symptoms: Colics, chill, tender right hypochondrium, emaciation, fatty stools. Treatment: Constitutional.
Reimers has reported several cases of pancreatic abscess, as a phase of irregular strangles (rhinoadenitis). In one case multiple abscesses with an aggregate capacity of 2½ quarts were found, and some of the pus had escaped by rupture into the peritoneum and produced infective inflammation. The abscesses had destroyed the greater portion of the gland, only a few isolated lobules being left.
Galland found an abscess as big as a walnut in the pancreas of a horse which had multiple tumors in the abdomen.
Symptoms. Colics occur from the local phlegmon, and it may be from its pressure on the duodenum so as to obstruct it, and this appearing in the course of strangles would indicate a forming abdominal abscess. Staring coat or shivering may coincide. Tenderness of the abdominal walls has been noticed by Reimers, together with a partial loss of appetite and a characteristically rapid emaciation. Fatty stools, if present, would be almost the only pathognomonic symptom.
Prognosis is that the abscess will open into the abdomen, and cause fatal infective peritonitis. It is only as an exceptional occurrence that its rupture into the duodenum or colon can be hoped for, yet in such a case recovery is possible.
Treatment. Little can be done. It would be well to treat the constitutional symptoms, and await results.
FOREIGN BODIES IN THE PANCREAS.
Brückmüller has noticed needles and other sharp objects in the pancreas of the dog, determining abscess and the formation of a thick, greenish pus in the adjacent glandular follicles. Goubaux once found a fragment of straw in the pancreatic duct of the horse. Such conditions are not likely to be diagnosed, but if this could be done laparotomy might be permissible in the dog for the removal of the foreign body.