The Colic Surgery Article

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I just read the Colic Surgery article - a couple things Dougie or HH might be able to answer it says the hospital stay is 5-7 days, however out here it is a 10 day if everything goes well. After 5 days the staples have not been removed.

Also they said the started at 2000 GBP, however out here you can expect to pay twice that.

Just a couple things that caught my eye.
 
Don't know whether this will help, but my boy was done erm, 10/11 years ago now, but he was only in for 7 days, despite it being a big job, mostly because he's so greedy they had to start feeding him again earlier than they might have, and his guts restarted fine, no complications whatsoever.
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It still cost more than £2000 then tho i think, def not much less!
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The cost and time in hospital depends on drugs used, time in surgery, time of colic and the aftercare. Some would have relatively small amounts of fluids and drugs. Others would deteriorate and have to have further drugs and treatment
 
From memory most stayed about a week for an uncomplicated surgery, anything more complicated involving resections etc tended to be a bit longer. I don't know about costs now but when I was there (5 years ago) for a straightforward op such as a colon dump I think it was about £1800-£2000.
 
lots of horses come home with the staples still in, I know my mare did and that was several years ago now 10/11. She was in for 10 days which was considered a very long time back then but she was very ill even though she got away without having her gut removed (just untwisted etc). But it took a while for it all to restart.
 
My last horse had an emergency operation two years ago. She was at the vets for two weeks although she did have a post op infection and the final bill was just over £4,000. I think it is very dependant on circumstances as to cost and length of stay.

The operation was carried out by 3 vets and two nurses on a Sunday nightand I know the vet stayed with all that night and most of the next one. Brillant for a relatively small rural practice.
 
My bill included all the visit once she was home to check on progress etc. Considering she made a full recovery and never had another problem I thought that was reasonable.
 
HH was that the cost for just the operation (not including day stay, medication, etc)? Or is that the total estimate out the door?

It sounds like they are pretty similar - I think it depends on the set up and case. Our hospital had 35 stalls and had a cheap daily rate, so it lent itself to keeping the horse there for a few extra days to get the staples out and make sure it was doing A OK.
 
WOW that is a good price, I am sure there are some clinics in the US that will charge that, however being in Southern California you can expect to pay more, as the cost of living is more here.

I would say £3K was on the cheap end, and as you know it can go incredibly high!
 
I presume it had a resection?? That would be $10,000 out here. Resections were always very cool operations, the colon used to take a bit of time to recover, the small intestines were much quicker however I did see a few not make 48 hours.
 
when i was at the RVC we estimated £2500 ish for colic surgery, dpeending on amount of aftercare needed. most stayed 5-7 days and went home with staples in.
 
3 meters is not too bad, I think you can do more than twice that (25 feet rings a bell - Dougie, HH?). I always thought small intestine resection were too fiddly though first time I saw the gun fired it was very cool. Colon resections way better, as they have 2 pieces of tubing they are putting back together, and the way they do it is very cool. Also with the colon being so large, it just has a neat appearance as falls into the bucket. Colon resections though the horse will still show signs of colic for 1-2 days afterwards.

It was on a horse with a lipoma that I used to caddle prod to get it up - it wanted to die. I must say when it came back for a recheck 2 weeks later, and looked so good it made me very happy!
 
We had a very high colic case load, 3 weeks was not uncommon especially if the horse underwent 2+ colic surgeries. I think our record was a horse who underwent 9 colic surgeries in 2 and a bit weeks - he had one a day for a while.
 
Good god! Would seriously be wondering if that horse would still be alive or is still having a good quality of life- surely they must be a lot of adhesions in his gut??
 
Well as you probably know you can not go in through the same incision as it would cause too much damage to the body wall, so the horse had 9 incisions.

The horse was much loved by his owner, and the surgeon much like we have seen with Dean Richardson, even though many people thought the horse should be put down, the horse was still fighting and they continued.

The horse made a full recovery, probably spent all of its pocket money though!! Not that I think that was the largest bill, one horse was there for a 1 year with laminitis - I think it's bill was $50,000.
 
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