[Etiology and chemotherapy of suppurative surgical infection in horses and cattle]

A total of 24 horses and 42 cattle with a variety of local suppurative processes (wounds, abscesses, phlegmons, tendovaginitis, etc.) were studied under conditions of the clinic with regard to the most commonly found microbial species and the opportunity to work out antibioticogrammes in terms of the effectiveness of 11 of the chemotherapeutic agents widely used in the practice. It was found that prevailing in horses were staphylococci and streptococci. In cattle Corynebacterium pyogenes was predominantly established. Besides, there was a rising trend in the part played by representative agents of the occasionally pathogenic microflora (Ps. aeruginosa, Pr. vulgaris, Escherichia coli) as the causative species of local suppurative processes. These organisms were fairly often isolated in association with other species, while they were more rarely found as the only acting ones in a particular case. Best effects of the antibiotics tested could be expectedly produced by gentamycin (82.5 per cent), carbenimycin (74.2 per cent), oxacyllin (72.7 per cent), ampicillin (68.2 per cent), and canamycin (61.8 per cent). At the same time, the effectiveness produced by some of the antibiotics widely employed in the practice, such as chloramphenicol, tetracycline, streptomycin, and penicillin was below 50 per cent.