Sheltie ear infections

Question
My 6 1/2-year-old female Shetland sheepdog has had chronic ear infections for several years. We've taken her to two different vets, had numerous tests, used ear washes and antibiotics. She actually responds very well to the antibiotics but after the treatment is complete and time passes, back comes the infection. I've heard using antibiotics too often can build up resistance to them and make them less effective. That's one concern. My main concern is my vet now says he may need to operate & "rebuild" her ear canal so it will drain better. Besides being expensive ($1800 for both ears), that sounds extremely painful and, frankly, pretty drastic. Besides which, he says it won't even necessarily fix the problem.
 So I'm wondering if you have any other suggestions. I noticed your comment to another reader ("Beagle ears") about "finding a vet with a video otoscope that can anesthetize your dog and do a good deep ear cleaning and exam." Could you tell me a bit more about this procedure please? Thank you very much for your time.

Answer
If your dog has had chronic ear problems, then there is some type of underlying skin disease that is causing this problem.  Without proper identification and treatment for things like allergies, then treating the infection is only temporary, as you have seen.

A video otoscope is a tapered stainless steel rigid endoscope that is connected to a miniature TV camera and that magnifies the image hundreds of times.  In the ear canal, there can be many things that cannot be visualized with an ordinary otoscope because of poor lighting and poor magnification. I helped develop this instrument in 1996 and it is in widespread use in many clinics today.

Go to www.medrx-usa.com and look at the veterinary products.