Medical therapy using omeprazole in 12 hydrocephalic dogs: clinical, diagnostic, and therapeutic findings

Abstract

ABSTRACT: According to experimental studies with healthy dogs, omeprazole might decrease the CSF production by about 26%; therefore, book texts have been suggested the usage of omeprazole in medical protocols for hydrocephalus treatment. However, to the best knowledge of the authors, the usage and medical response of the omeprazole with substantial group of illness dogs, such as hydrocephalic animals, was lacking. This report describes clinical, diagnostic, and therapeutic findings in 12 dogs with hydrocephalus in which omeprazole were used for medical treatment. The diagnosis of hydrocephalus was accomplished by transcranial sonography (TCS) and/or computed tomography. The ventricular measurement was assessed periodically by TCS during medical treatment. Six dogs were diagnosed with non-obstrutive hydrocephalus and in the other 6 cases hydrocephalus occurred with other concomitant anomalous encephalic disease often related with obstructive hysdrocephalus, such as quadrigeminal cist, arachnoid cyst, chiary-like malformation, and syringomyelia. All of them had medical improvement after the use of omeprazole and the most of the cases had ventricular size reduction. In 10 dogs, the omeprazole was used as single drug, and in 2 dogs medical treatment with steroids and/or diuretics was previously being performed, and omeprazole was added because conventional treatment was resulting in mild to unsatisfactory medical control of the neurological status. The results of this paper shown that omeprazole may be used to ameliorate the neurological status in symptomatic hydrocephalic dogs. This work may represent the first description about the use of omeprazole in order to treat a substantial group of affected dogs with suspected increased intracranial pressure by hydrocephalus, probably due to limitation of CSF production.