Recovery from aspiration pneumonia?

mynutmeg

mynutmeg

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I have a usually fit and healthy 7 year old cob mare, on Friday night she choked whilst having her 16 day pregnancy scan. The vet scanning her (not our usual as using the stud's vet for repo work) said she'd clear it herself within a hour or two and left without looking at her. I had to go pick my sister up and left her with no food but water. Was back within about 2 hours and she had gunk coming down her nose, I called my regular vet who came immediately. He gave buscapan and penicillin but didn't tube as he wa worried about putting water into her lungs due to where the choke was. I stayed with her till about midnight. After the buscapan she started coughing and was bringing a decent amount of liquid up but no food. I had to go for the night but she was checked overnight by the yard owner as she has a mare ready to drop. I got back early morning and she was obviously worse, struggling to breath with noise all the way through her lungs. The vet came back right away and tubed her. She wouldn't swallow the tube and it kept going into her lungs - was definitely a good thing judging by the amount of fluid that came out the lungs. He managed to get the tube into her oesphagus and got most but not all the choke cleared. She was given more buscapan, 2 litres of IV fluids as she was getting dehydrated due to not drinking and the vet said to call in a couple of hours once the sedatives wore off and let him know how she was. Because of the amount of fluid that came out her lungs her breathing was better but she was consistently at a heart rate of 80, temp of 39.2 and resp rate of 26 and after a couple of hours with no improvement the vet came back and we decided to take her to the vet hospital.
She got to the hospital (one of the best in the country) last night and was descended on by the vet students and vet. She was examined, had gentamicine, metronidazol, frusimide and lots of fluid. This morning they've scoped and scanned her and she has longitudinal ulcers down her oesophagus, lungs looked ok and scan showed some consolidation in her lungs. She's staying at the vet hospital on the IV antibiotics for at least 4 days and they're going to re-scan and re-scope her mid week and see how she goes.

Sorry for the long question and I guess the actual question is what sort of time scale are we looking at for recovery from this?

I'm seriously angry at the vet who was scanning her, our vet has said that if she'd had the buscapan right away she probably would have cleared the choke without all the complications, as it is our regular vet saved her life, of that I have no doubt
 
mynutmeg said:
I'm seriously angry at the vet who was scanning her, our vet has said that if she'd had the buscapan right away she probably would have cleared the choke without all the complications, as it is our regular vet saved her life, of that I have no doubt
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I don't blame you! Choke is a potentially serious and life threatening condition and any vet who dismisses it out of hand like that wants reporting to his professional standards body - in the UK that is the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

Can't help you with recovery time as fortunately I have never had a complicated case - and where I haven't been able to clear it quickly myself, my vet has always responded promptly and treated it successfully.

Your mare is in the best place for now - I hope she makes a full recovery - but the vets treating her are the best ones to advise on recovery times because every case of this sort IS different.
 
I could kinda understand if I'd phoned and they said give her an hour or two but he was right there! I am planning on reporting him and we've spoken to lawyers about it. I know it's not the most important thing and we do have insurnace but her treatment is already almost £2000.

I will say our normal vet who came and treated her has saved her life, first in giving the penicillin right away, by tubing into her lungs and getting the fluid out (even if he was trying to get down her oesphagus) and then by sending her to the hospital when he did.

I will talk to the vets at th hospital but they're still assessing her and waiting to see how bad she gets, we got her there quickly so hopefully she won't get any better. I think we'll have a better idea of how she's going to go when she gets scanned next and once we see how her temp goes. She's only been at the vet school for 24 hours.
 
Have no idea about aspirational pneumonia, but pneumonia can be a very long and drawn out illness, I know a horse who has just been prononuced clear, but its taken 7 months, although it responded to initial treatment but didn't resolve so had to be treated again.
Anyway hope she recovers well and speedily!
 
Fibre nuts - she was being hand fed them as well but she's a podgy mare and on a diet and I think she was swallowing before chewing. She had a mouthful out the bucket to start with I believe (I wasn't feeding, I was holding her butt across) and then just a couple at a time. They're something she's always been given and never had a bother with, I think it's just been pure bad luck (and a greedy mare) that she choked in the first place but the result could have been avoided if the vet scanning had given some buscapan.
 
We often use food as a bribe to get them to stand still for unpleasent things such as having a hand stuck up your butt, I would always rather try that before sedation as long as it's safe too.
 
Thought I'd give you an update, she's improving and should be switching to oral antibiotics tomorrow with a view to coming home this weekend. It looks like we caught her early enough that she's not got too bad :-)
 
After reading about your horse it makes me realise how lucky I was when my youngster recently got choke! My vet advised that most clear with no treatment - he gave mine Buscopan and Acezine and a couple of hours later the choke cleared. In between he was losing fluid out of his nostrils - saliva that wasn't being swallowed.

I hope your horse gets over the pneumonia - she's in the right place.
 
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