Post colic surgery incisional hernia

I have a mare who had colic surgery about 5 or 6 years ago. She developed quite a large incisional hernia. It hasn't caused her any problems although we haven't bred from her since. The vets said we probably could but we decided we didn't want to risk it.
 
Yes, we had a foal orphaned at 3 months (mother died of colic - probably long term worm damage or ulcers) then she got colic at 6 months, post op within a few weeks hernia towards the front of the wound site appeared, this became infected and within 2 months of original op had to be operated again. As the tissue was so weak and the aim of the op was to take out infected tissue, it herniated again.
We left it 10 months, until october last year and operated on again as it would have caused her problems with the sighting of it - she was also young and the theory was by leaving it this amount of time she would have healthy tissue. approx 2 weeks after surgery there were complications, and she presented with severe spasmodic colic - after 3 days of ups and downs we decided to end the pain.

If I had hindsight I would not have operated on her again. And I probably would never operate on a colic case again - we never found the original cause of the colic in her too at the end we assume it was adhesions or torsion, but by this stage I couldn't afford to investigate. Rossdales were fantastic with all of it and Tim had apparently never seen a case quite like it.

If you want photos, pm me with your email address and I'll send some over.
 
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