Have you ever seen a horse receiving CPR?

[Gamebird]

As an ex anaesthetist (human) this makes
No sense at all — sounds like they didnt reverse the paralytic agent properly and they shouldve been able to work that out fairly quickly… and why do chest compressions rather than ventilate … weird.

No paralytic agent is usually given for equine GAs. The horse would have to have been returned to theatre to be connected to the ventilator, which isn't a case of just whizzing it on a trolley like a human, but re-attaching leg chains, re-hoisting it and moving it on the overhead rails. I can imagine that they thought they might not have time for all that as it is usually a slow and cumbersome process.

 

[milliepops]

My last one to have a GA had what the vets described as a "difficult recovery".
she was left in recovery overnight and was still knuckling over occasionally when i saw her the next day.

We're all different in how much detail we like to receive or share, for me i consider all my horses medical care a good opportunity to learn so i would generally like to know the details but I suppose vets have to assume the opposite and not worry owners unduly.

 

[Blanche]

I saw one at a polo match many, many years ago(35 or more)and it wasn’t successful. It had never occurred to me that horses would have cpr like that at the time. Every day is a learning day.

 

[Laafet]

Interesting account - but I am surprised that you were allowed to watch. At Rossdales and NEH even as an owner they are cagey about letting you see your horse in the stable the day they have had an operation let alone watch them get up. Waking up from a GA is quite possibly one of the most dangerous parts of operating on horses, I've had horses in my care not survive it so totally understand why my local vets take this stance.

 

[rabatsa]

It sounds like the bumping of the lungs was not to get the heart going but to get the lungs to work.

 

[spotty_pony]

Sounds scary! I’ve never witnessed it myself thank goodness but I know GA is very risky on any animal. Sounds like the horse was very lucky to come round.

 

[PapaverFollis]

Everything I hear about GA in horses quite frankly puts me off ever submitting one of mine to it! NOT that we have much choice, located where we are anyway, but wow; what a thing to put them through. I understand why people take the decision to do so though and faced with a significant difference in prognosis for one of mine I might still be persuaded... but I think I would only want to know the eventual outcome and not know about any struggle or danger they went through during the process.

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

The horse is absolutely fine today BTW. Not a bother on it! No scratches, scrapes or the likes so you would never know what it got up to whilst in recovery from looking at it.

 

[druid]

That's not technically CPR it's just attempts to stimulate breathing. It's not that uncommon for horses to breath hold post op especially where weaning on the ventilator hasn't been optimal due to the operation/horse's reactions under GA - I try to always have mine breathing spontaneously on the way to the recovery stall but that's not always possible. We would always have oxygen hooked up a demand valve in order to be able to provide breaths as needed in recovery to get them going. You do have to allow a build up of CO2 to occur to some extent as it's one of the triggers to tell the brain to strat breathing, there's a balance.

 

[sport horse]

The horse is absolutely fine today BTW. Not a bother on it! No scratches, scrapes or the likes so you would never know what it got up to whilst in recovery from looking at it.

You happened to go to the vets yesterday with another horse and happened to be able to watch all the described scenario through a window from the stables and today you have a full update on the said horse down to no scratches, scrapes etc. What a shocking breach of confidentiality by the vet practise. I would be livid if that were my horse. I now know why my vets take the horses in the arrival area and no one is allowed behind the scenes. Suppose that were a top competition horse or racehorse and news was spread around willy nilly. Truly appalling.

 

[ester]

Thanks Druid

 

[[153312]]

That's not technically CPR it's just attempts to stimulate breathing. It's not that uncommon for horses to breath hold post op especially where weaning on the ventilator hasn't been optimal due to the operation/horse's reactions under GA - I try to always have mine breathing spontaneously on the way to the recovery stall but that's not always possible. We would always have oxygen hooked up a demand valve in order to be able to provide breaths as needed in recovery to get them going. You do have to allow a build up of CO2 to occur to some extent as it's one of the triggers to tell the brain to strat breathing, there's a balance.

Wow thank you that's fascinating

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

You happened to go to the vets yesterday with another horse and happened to be able to watch all the described scenario through a window from the stables and today you have a full update on the said horse down to no scratches, scrapes etc. What a shocking breach of confidentiality by the vet practise. I would be livid if that were my horse. I now know why my vets take the horses in the arrival area and no one is allowed behind the scenes. Suppose that were a top competition horse or racehorse and news was spread around willy nilly. Truly appalling.

I'm still at the vets, I stayed down overnight for the to get it's work up today so I have seen the horse for myself. I don't even know the horses name.

 

[Michen]

I'm still at the vets, I stayed down overnight for the to get it's work up today so I have seen the horse for myself. I don't even know the horses name.

You must have had a pretty good close up look to rule out any scratches etc!

Bizarre.

Anyway, I am biased due to my past experience, but I don't think posting about this was right ethically nor for the vets to allow you to watch.

 

[Alwaysmoretoknow]

Back in the olden days when horses were 'knocked down' with chloroform(?) for any sort of surgical proceedure (such as it was in those days) in that muzzle thing where you soaked absorbent material in the fluid, put it in the wire mesh bit at the bottom and walked the horse round untill it basically fell over and then knelt on it's neck to keep it down (adding more of the drug if it started to struggle - God it was so horribly primitive) then having to sometimes jump up and down on their chests if they stopped breathing wasn't unknown. Thank heavens modern equine veterinary medicine and especially surgery has been totally transformed.
And now I feel realy old.

 

[blitznbobs]

No paralytic agent is usually given for equine GAs. The horse would have to have been returned to theatre to be connected to the ventilator, which isn't a case of just whizzing it on a trolley like a human, but re-attaching leg chains, re-hoisting it and moving it on the overhead rails. I can imagine that they thought they might not have time for all that as it is usually a slow and cumbersome process.

you don't need a ventilator... and how do they ventilate if they don't paralyse?

ETA just had a look there are a hell of a lot of papers out their about different paralytic agents used in a helluva lot of equine surgery... I for one don't see how you could do abdo surgery without it seeing the trouble it can be to pull a human abdo back together and a horse is a lot bigger... but I'd be interested to hear how it is done with out.

 

[nagblagger]

you don't need a ventilator... and how do they ventilate if they don't paralyse?.

I was thinking the same...maybe just respiratory depressants?
if the tube was still in situ, as Elf said, surely they could have used a rebreathe bag to stimulate breathing with O2.
Emergencies are scary, at least it was a good outcome and maybe learning for the team involved.

 

[Gamebird]

Sorry, poorly written as I was in a hurry. I could have worded it better. I work in a different field of equine surgery, where we don't use them for anaesthesia (or, obviously, ventilators!). I forget that other branches of anaesthesia do things differently. My abdominal surgery experience is over 20 years ago now. We didn't ventilate then, but apparently they do now. Ignore me in future! I'll stick to doing the cutting and leave talking about the sleepy bit to others better qualified.

I'm going to stand behind my comments about the difficulties of getting the horse back into theatre to the ventilator though, and the absolute nightmare that would ensue if it woke up (seeing as it was off all anaesthetic by then) en route, suspended from the ceiling.

 

[Orangehorse]

Back in the olden days when horses were 'knocked down' with chloroform(?) for any sort of surgical proceedure (such as it was in those days) in that muzzle thing where you soaked absorbent material in the fluid, put it in the wire mesh bit at the bottom and walked the horse round untill it basically fell over and then knelt on it's neck to keep it down (adding more of the drug if it started to struggle - God it was so horribly primitive) then having to sometimes jump up and down on their chests if they stopped breathing wasn't unknown. Thank heavens modern equine veterinary medicine and especially surgery has been totally transformed.
And now I feel realy old.

You are right. One of ours was being gelded and got away from the handler, galloped off down the field and fell in a heap in the corner. Vet rushed after it, did the operation. Took a while for it to come round, but not surprising considering how much it must have taken in!

Various things have been tried to make the coming round from a GA safer for horses, but I don't think there is a great deal to be done. You think there would be some sort of pulley system but at some stage they are going to have to put their weight on their legs.

Interesting, thanks OP.

 

[gallopingby]

Interesting comments from some people, no names, places etc have been given. How do some of you think students /
potential students learn? Years ago we were given the choice of watching through a viewing window or actually being in theatre. Unless you’re part of something you really can’t appreciate what happens. Confidentially is paramount but sadly in this high tech age many people think it’s ok to video and post without consent which is clearly wrong. Here we’ve a description of what happened when things were maybe slightly tricky, so some of you didn’t like it -
you don’t need to read on, or Google the outcomes or potential for things to go wrong. Maybe consider one of the roles of a teaching practice, which this could well have been, is to educate on possible outcomes of any treatment?

 

[Michen]

Interesting comments from some people, no names, places etc have been given. How do some of you think students /
potential students learn? Years ago we were given the choice of watching through a viewing window or actually being in theatre. Unless you’re part of something you really can’t appreciate what happens. Confidentially is paramount but sadly in this high tech age many people think it’s ok to video and post without consent which is clearly wrong. Here we’ve a description of what happened when things were maybe slightly tricky, so some of you didn’t like it -
you don’t need to read on, or Google the outcomes or potential for things to go wrong. Maybe consider one of the roles of a teaching practice, which this could well have been, is to educate on possible outcomes of any treatment?

But it wasn’t. Just someone completely unrelated neither student nor otherwise choosing to watch someone else’s horse, post in detail about it and even then check it over enough to see it didn’t have a scratch the next day.

Gosh if I came round the corner to find a randomer peering into my sick horses stable to see how it had fared I’d find it very disconcerting and that’s just one aspect of it.

But each to their own.

 

[[153312]]

Iirc they normally ask owners consent for vet/work experience students to be present beforehand don't they? Ours does anyway, ditto our farrier with apprentices.

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

You must have had a pretty good close up look to rule out any scratches etc!

Bizarre.

Anyway, I am biased due to my past experience, but I don't think posting about this was right ethically nor for the vets to allow you to watch.

My horse was stabled opposite the window for the surgery and the horse in question was then stabled next to mine when recovered and back in its box. So no I did not go poking around. The vet asked if I wanted to watch and out of curiosity I said yes as its something I had never seen before as generally we hand the horses over and leave again. No the recovery didn't go quit as planned and that, after the cpr was all watched on cctv which they encouraged me to do.

I have not named the vets, the practice or even the county its in. I don't know the name of the horse, I haven't even said what colour it was. So if you can magically be angry about a completely unknown horse to you then by all means get angry about it. You did not need to continue to read the thread, you didn't even need to open it. I personally thought it was an interesting insight into what most people don't see. Same as when I do my random work rider blog posts. And I have always said with them that there will always be things that go on that you won't always like nor approve of. That's life. Deal with it.

 

[ihatework]

As an aside, I’ve always wondered, has your boss and the horses owners given approval for you to post about them? I kind of assume so.

 

[Michen]

My horse was stabled opposite the window for the surgery and the horse in question was then stabled next to mine when recovered and back in its box. So no I did not go poking around. The vet asked if I wanted to watch and out of curiosity I said yes as its something I had never seen before as generally we hand the horses over and leave again. No the recovery didn't go quit as planned and that, after the cpr was all watched on cctv which they encouraged me to do.

I have not named the vets, the practice or even the county its in. I don't know the name of the horse, I haven't even said what colour it was. So if you can magically be angry about a completely unknown horse to you then by all means get angry about it. You did not need to continue to read the thread, you didn't even need to open it. I personally thought it was an interesting insight into what most people don't see. Same as when I do my random work rider blog posts. And I have always said with them that there will always be things that go on that you won't always like nor approve of. That's life. Deal with it.

In the same way you can “deal with it” that I have an opinion about the ethics or lack of regarding the whole situation. If you want to post on an open forum then you can expect people to comment with their thoughts.

Your posts are just unnecessarily aggressive tbh.

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

As an aside, I’ve always wondered, has your boss and the horses owners given approval for you to post about them? I kind of assume so.

Yeah and because it's mostly light hearted and doesn't give away too many trade secrets its fine.

 

[ihatework]

Yeah and because it's mostly light hearted and doesn't give away too many trade secrets its fine.

Well that’s cool then and no skin off my nose.
But not something I’d personally authorise if I were employer/owner

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

In the same way you can “deal with it” that I have an opinion about the ethics or lack of regarding the whole situation. If you want to post on an open forum then you can expect people to comment with their thoughts.

Your posts are just unnecessarily aggressive tbh.

Your posts were unnecessarily aggressive. And I have had enough of fluffy bunny huggers these days.

 

[meleeka]

You happened to go to the vets yesterday with another horse and happened to be able to watch all the described scenario through a window from the stables and today you have a full update on the said horse down to no scratches, scrapes etc. What a shocking breach of confidentiality by the vet practise. I would be livid if that were my horse. I now know why my vets take the horses in the arrival area and no one is allowed behind the scenes. Suppose that were a top competition horse or racehorse and news was spread around willy nilly. Truly appalling.

Where’s the full update? All I read was that it is fine today. I don’t know what it had operated on, what type of horse it was, and especially what vet hospital.

When my horse stayed at the vets and was operated on I was asked if I wanted to watch. I’ve no idea if anyone else watched, whether that was students or someone who had a horse there. I really don’t think I’d be bothered in the slightest, as long as they weren’t actually involved.

When my horse was in there was a beautiful mare and foal stabled opposite. I went and had a look over the door while I was there, as I think most people visiting did. I can’t see why it’s so offensive?

 

[Lois Lame]

Trying to work out why they would give chest compressions when it had a pulse.

Exactly.

They were about to reventilate, the horse still had the tube in. I am assuming they were trying to bump start the horse whilst moving all the oxygen equipment?! It's above my pay grade but it was quite interesting to watch.

I thought you could stop the heart if it were already beating. Upset the rhythm. This is why I think it's odd that anyone can watch and report what they thing they saw.