The only way to know for sure if it is CT is an xray. It will actually show the narrowing, how much narrower and the location and extent of the narrowing.
There is more available now for treatment than ever before and usually will work. There are cases where nothing will help much and I suspect in those cases it could be a neurological problem coupled with the trachea collapse due to compromised cartilage.
The common treatment is hycodan for coughing along with short doses of prednisone. However, the side effects of these drugs can be a bit much. The injectible treatment for cartilage issues in knees and joints seems to work most of the time in helping the cartilage issue of the trachea although the drug Cartrophen or when it is available, Adequan, is not labeled for trachea collapse, it has provided dramatic improvement. I have a Yorkie that had a collapse trachea. It showed up on the xray and the collapse involved quite a large section of trachea. Hycodan and prednisone didn't work so I heard of the injectible drug and he was put on Adequan. Six months or so later we repeated the xray and found except for a small bit of the trachea, most of it recovered to normal size. We don't know why the small portion did not recover as well.
Eventually he was coughing a bit again, he is now 11 years old, CT started at 9 years old. When he started coughing again at about 10 years old xray revealed a lung condition, chronic bronchitis. He is still with me has bad days and good days. He still gets injections about every 3 weeks, 4 weeks is too long in between. Some days he gets hycodan as required, sometimes I also add prednisone. Another drug he gets sometimes when the coughing is persistent is cerenia. Cerenia will tell the brain not to cough.
Coughing can irritate the trachea and make the coughing worse. Controlling the coughing bouts is important. |