Illness/Sickness: Fire belly newt with enlarged eye

[Nelda]

I have a 20 year old fire belly newt. Over the past year her eye as become enlarged, and continues to get bigger. I have taken her/him to the vet and they do not have an explanation. Does anyone have any insight? Thank you

 

[Chinadog]

Hi, welcome to the site!
That's quite a swelling! It looks like a tumour or abscess of some kind. The only way to be certain is to try and find a vet that is experienced in treating amphibians. It might be worth calling up a few local vet surgeries and asking them if there's anybody they could recommend, they often do, that's how I found my exotics vet.
Congratulations on having such a long lived newt, I'd love to see some more pictures of her.

 

[Nelda]

Thank you Chinadog. I did take her to an exotic vet. I am not sure they were that experienced with newts, as I am sure a lot of people do not take them to the vet. They gave me drops for the eye and vitamin C for her, which did not seem to help. She is up and about and still eats a good amount. I just hope she is not in pain. I will search for another vet. Here are some more pics. Thank you for the reply.

 

[Nelda]

Sorry,w/ pics

 

[jewett]

If you cannot find a more newt savvy vet, it may be worth while to return to the original exotics vet and request a cytology (if they did not do this initially). The cytology should give information like if it's a malignancy, infectious, etc. However, I appreciate that newts are small animals and it may be difficult to get a good sample for microscopic evaluation but I think at least calling the vet and asking if they would be willing to try would be beneficial.

As far as the newt being in pain - Florida Atlantic University's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) has a paper that I found on line that states signs of mild to moderate pain/ distress in amphibians as "Decrease in avoidance behavior (e.g. when approached), abnormal behavior, reduced food/water intake, closed eyes, color changes" and signs of severe or chronic pain/ distress as "Movement aversion, lethargy, closed eyes, anorexia, color changes, flicking with extremities or biting of affected area, lameness and ataxia, accelerated breathing" I don't know how much this applies to caudates in particular, but if your newt maintains a good weight and continues about with its normal activity, I would venture to guess that it is at least reasonably comfortable.

I hope you can get a diagnosis! Please keep us updated as to your animals progress and I wish you the best of luck.

HJ