Sinusitis / Tooth trouble / WWYD?

[montysmum1]

My 6 yr old mare has had sinsitis on and off for ~ 3months now, 5 courses of antibiotics, each of which clears it up for a week or so, then it returns. We took her for x-rays on Thursday, which showed pretty awful conformation of her teeth on the infected side, and the second from the back one seeming to be the cause of the problem, with thickened white showing around the root as opposed to the black line which is meant to be present around the root capsule. My vet advised that this is spondulosis of the jaw bone, caused by an infection which may have slowly begun a few years ago as the teeth were emerging in such wonky fashion. He said that tooth extraction would probably be the only way we could fix the problem, but that because she is so young, the root is very large, and removal would cause even more problems. A specialist looked at her x-rays yesterday, and advised that draining through a small hole drilled into her face, then flushing with anti-biotics MAY work, but it may not, as it very much depends on the damage to the bone, which we wouldn't know without doing more invasive surgery, which I am quite reluctant to do, mainly due to cost and recover/further infection complications.
What would you do? She's not insured, and I do not have unlimited funds, but I would love a miracle cure, she's a lovely little horse, but I don't want to put her through too much, and I sometimes worry that vets will try too hard to fix something which may not actually be fixable(from previous experience), when actually giving in gracefully before she suffers too much may be a kinder solution? I'm in such a muddle.
Any advice welcome x

 

[shergar]

Sorry to hear your horse has such a problem,have a look at the TURMERIC USER GROUP on face book they use it for so many things ,and have a lot of success stories on the site.
If you can message the chap that runs the site I think he is a vet and his name is Doug English.
Well worth a look.

 

[abbieandfiona]

You need a ct scan to be sure of anything. My mare has primary sinusitis similar to yours antibs did not clear this after trying a few. She had x-rays which came back normal. However still had the smelly green discharge. As i have her insured she had a ct scan which showed issues with a tooth. The vets added a camera into this area and found 4 teeth with rotten decay at routes. However they did not remove the teeth as felt that would not benefit.

Last tuesday they operated on her and found her sinus was solid so had to drill a hole to connect them. She has a tube in her face which had to be flushed x2 a day however it got blocked so she had another operation on Thursday this week. The tubes are due out next week and she has to be on box rest until the face heals.

There will be no scar to what has been done. She took badly to being flushed so thats most likely the cause of having to go back.

Without this treatment she would have continued to be in pain as it causes a headache.

The vets were clear with me the operation was the only option. It sounds worse than it is.

If you can have the operation and have the time to be at home they will discharge as soon as they have flushed through once. The recovery after the tube is out can be as quick as 3 days I was just unlucky that my mare got blocked up.

 

[abbieandfiona]

This should show an image of what she had done. If it helps i can find an image of how her nose looked like so you can compare if you like?