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by Dr Michaela Avery, Inner West Cat Hospital, Newtown, NSW
We found this EKCT ear gel at Sydney South Compounding Chemist when we opened our practice in 2021. As we are a cat clinic, our patients are frequently difficult to medicate, but this gel makes the job much easier.
What’s good about it
Ear infections are fairly common among cats, especially if they have allergies. We also see a lot of cats with small ear canals suffering from otitis. This gel works well with these cats and only 0.3ml is needed in each ear.
It’s one of the only ear products I’ve found that covers all types of ear infections affecting cats. Not only is it effective but it’s easy to administer. Often, when a client is having difficulty putting drops in a cat’s ear, they’ll refuse to do it. This gel solves that problem. Once applied, it lasts for about seven days and rarely needs to be re-applied.
It stays in position and kills yeast along with rods and cocci bacteria. A lot of these types of gels contain Flamazine but there’s some bacterial resistance to that now. This gel is well accepted and provides good results. The client brings their cat to the clinic, I clean up the ear canal and apply the gel. We get the client to assist by holding the cat and this used to cause some issues. As this gel is so well accepted, we have fewer cats angry at their owners. This means the cat and the owner are happy and there are fewer bad relationships between them.
What’s not so good
It’s probably not the best antibiotic stewardship because we’re using important antibiotics to which cats could build a resistance. Presently everything is fine but it might be an issue we have to face in the future.
