Neuralgic Colic?

[IcarusGirl]

My horse we'd owned 16 years died of colic a couple of months ago.

We didn't get any kind of post mortem because it wouldnt have brought him back, and I'd have tortured myself if i'd found out he had something that could have saved him had I known sooner.

Anyway, while he was colicking our vet kept saying he wasnt presenting with regular colic symptoms. He kept leaning his head into the stable walls and pressing his throat down on the stable door. The vet felt up his backside and said he could feel a "tyre shape", but didnt think it was an automatic candidate for colic surgery.

He did all the usual colic things, thrashing, rolling, groaning, but then had these strange episodes where he started juddering his head. The vet obviously gave copious painkillers and muscle relaxants, but to no avail. Strangely, he was able to pass wind.

The vet said he was concerned that it was neuralgic. He was acting as if he'd been poisoned.

In the end, we called the vet back after giving the drugs a chance to work, and said it was time to let him go and stop the suffering . The vet sedated him again so that he could administer the final injection, and tonnes (and i mean buckets!) of bile started pouring out of his nostrils. It was horrific and very distressing. The vet also said he'd developed a heart murmur in the two hours between his first and second visit.

Anyway - the point of this is... has anyone heard of anything similar? We've just heard that a local farrier had near enough the same symptoms with his horse, and with no explanation. Feed/routine/everything the same as always, and yet the horse was fine and happy in the morning and dead by the evening. Same as ours. They managed to take bloods from this horse and discovered high liver toxicity.

Also: please don't suggest I could have done anything differently. It's too late. He was my absolute heart-horse and I'm devastated at his loss. I already feel like I let him down by now immediately having him put to sleep, but we had to give him a chance.

 

[PinkvSantaboots]

I am sorry you have had to go through this it must have been very traumatic.

I have never heard of such a colic so can't offer any help there I am afraid.

I just wanted to say please don't feel guilty in these circumstances we can only do what we think is best, no one has any right to tell you otherwise and question your decision at such a stressful time, I hope you manage to find out more and get some answers.

 

[cobgoblin]

Really sorry that you and your horse had to go through this, it sounds horrific.
I would think the vet meant that the symptoms indicated possible poisoning with a neurotoxin. This could affect gut movement by paralysing the nerves to the gut, but would also result in multiple other effects as well.

There was nothing you could have done unless the causative agent could be identified and maybe not even then. It's suspicious that the farmer had a horse with the same symptoms... there may be something in the area, or perhaps dumped, a plant, in a water course.. You may never find out unfortunately, but I would hope your vet is on the lookout.
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[IcarusGirl]

Really sorry that you and your horse had to go through this, it sounds horrific.
I would think the vet meant that the symptoms indicated possible poisoning with a neurotoxin. This could affect gut movement by paralysing the nerves to the gut, but would also result in multiple other effects as well.

There was nothing you could have done unless the causative agent could be identified and maybe not even then. It's suspicious that the farmer had a horse with the same symptoms... there may be something in the area, or perhaps dumped, a plant, in a water course.. You may never find out unfortunately, but I would hope your vet is on the lookout.
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Very strange - the other horse with similar symptoms doesn't live close to mine. Apart from being in the same county, they're miles apart - but have the same vet practise, who has linked the two as being eerily similar and unexplainable.

As I say, it doesn't change the outcome. But if there's more cases like mine popping up in the south east, I would worry about a possibility of a disease or virus that causes it. As if we haven't all had enough of viruses recently!

 

[MissTyc]

What a horrible thing for you and your horse to have to go through. You did the right thing, both by giving your horse a chance and then by letting him go swiftly, so please never question or doubt yourself on that front.

To your question, there are so many gut disturbances and only some are catastrophic. It's normal to try to link events, but in reality there are not many "unknown" substances that will easily take down a horse like this. Poisoning is of course possible if there are suspect trees, plants (I'm forever pulling deadly nightshade from one of my paddocks), or mold (mycotoxins). But you would find evidence of these things existing in the field, even if you horse was the only one to ingest them. Sometimes it's best not to torture yourself - for example, it's not unusual even with a twisted gut for a horse to be able to pass some wind, and the bile does suggest a serious obstruction somewhere in the gut. Horses are so badly designed. I am really sorry you had to go through this; it's every owner's nightmare.

 

[Murphy88]

It sounds like your horse had a strangulating small intestine lesion - the "tire" on rectal would have been a loop of distended small intestine, and the bile out the nose would be reflux (fluid build up in the stomach). Older horses can get little fatty lumps that wrap around the intestine and cause this, which is what I would be suspicious of in your boy, and this is sadly just a bad luck event with no way to prevent it. While surgical colics in general are uncommon (<10% of all colics) this would be one of the more common ones - any horse over the age of 15 with severe colic I would put a strangulating lipoma (fatty lump) at the top of my list. I suspect the signs you were seeing were all just a manifestation of pain - horses with colic can do some very strange things, and I have had many horses referred to me with neurologic disease that were actually just colicking, From your description it sounds like your horse was very sick, and while some of these horses can be saved with surgery (usually requiring removal of the dead piece of intestine), many can not be and I would say you absolutely made the right decision for your horse.

It's hard to know what the other horse had, liver disease can cause signs of colic and neurologic disease but doesn't cause distended small intestine or reflux like your horse had, and generally the horses have shown signs of illness before the liver disease is bad enough to cause neurologic signs such as running into walls and blindness. Some types of colic affecting the large intestine will also raise liver enzymes because the liver gets squashed if the colon is distended. So that horse might have just been a severe colic (bad luck again) or might have truly had liver disease, in which case ragwort toxicity is always top of the list given it can take years to show up so the toxicity often occurred with another owner.

 

[IcarusGirl]

It sounds like your horse had a strangulating small intestine lesion - the "tire" on rectal would have been a loop of distended small intestine, and the bile out the nose would be reflux (fluid build up in the stomach). Older horses can get little fatty lumps that wrap around the intestine and cause this, which is what I would be suspicious of in your boy, and this is sadly just a bad luck event with no way to prevent it. While surgical colics in general are uncommon (<10% of all colics) this would be one of the more common ones - any horse over the age of 15 with severe colic I would put a strangulating lipoma (fatty lump) at the top of my list. I suspect the signs you were seeing were all just a manifestation of pain - horses with colic can do some very strange things, and I have had many horses referred to me with neurologic disease that were actually just colicking, From your description it sounds like your horse was very sick, and while some of these horses can be saved with surgery (usually requiring removal of the dead piece of intestine), many can not be and I would say you absolutely made the right decision for your horse.

It's hard to know what the other horse had, liver disease can cause signs of colic and neurologic disease but doesn't cause distended small intestine or reflux like your horse had, and generally the horses have shown signs of illness before the liver disease is bad enough to cause neurologic signs such as running into walls and blindness. Some types of colic affecting the large intestine will also raise liver enzymes because the liver gets squashed if the colon is distended. So that horse might have just been a severe colic (bad luck again) or might have truly had liver disease, in which case ragwort toxicity is always top of the list given it can take years to show up so the toxicity often occurred with another owner.

Thank you - yes, I'd come to the conclusion that mine may have even had a tumour or similar inside, unknown to us. We'd already said to ourselves that we wouldnt have put him through surgery for a twisted gut at his age. But it's such a shame it came to that. He was such a loving horse who didnt deserve to go like that.

I'd written it off as bad luck and a twisted gut or tumour causing a blockage. It's only that the vet had contacted us to say he had the same similar circumstance with another that made me wonder. It's most likely not linked in any way.