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Treatment

This condition cannot be reversed. However, for certain defects such as a coloboma, surgery can sometimes be employed to minimize the effects of the disorder. Laser surgery is one method your veterinarian may suggest. Cryosurgery, which utilizes extreme cold to destroy unwanted cell or tissue, is another option for preventing retinal detachment or further deterioration. In some cases, surgery may even be used to help reattach the retina.

Living and Management

If there is a coloboma, your dog should be monitored carefully during the first year of life for signs of retinal detachment; after a year, retinal detachments rarely occur.

Prevention

As to prevention, there is no way to prevent the occurrence once pregnancy has taken place. The only way to eliminate the trait is to not breed dogs that have the chromosomal defect. At the same time, breeding minimally affected dogs to other minimally affected or carrier dogs may result in minimally affected offspring. However, any level of severity can be produced by such breedings. Breeding of more severely affected dogs is highly likely to produce severely affected offspring.

One study looked at 8,204 rough collies in Sweden over an eight year period (76 percent of all collies registered in Sweden) and found that breeders tended to select against dogs with colobomas but continued to breed dogs with the defective chromosome. From 1989 to 1997, the strategy resulted in a significant increase in the occurrence of the defective chromosome, going from 54 to 68 percent, and the prevalence of colobomas increased as well, rising from 8.3 percent to 8.5 percent. Another side effect is that litter size significantly decreased when at least one of the parents was affected with a coloboma.