Week 1

My summer Equine Fellows experience began on Monday when I started working at Saginaw Valley Equine Clinic (SVEC) in Saginaw, MI.  There are three doctors in this practice – Dr. Jones who mainly does the ambulatory and critical care work, Dr. Cumper who focuses on reproduction, and Dr. Rhapson who just graduated from MSU CVM and also started working there on Monday.  It has been a very busy week but I have already learned a ton and am excited for all that I will experience this summer.

This week included some of the basics like vaccines and Coggins, but also a lot of palpating and breeding mares and embryo transfers, working on 2 foals with flexural deformities, and scoping a horse with a guttural pouch infection and another with gastric ulcers.  The most interesting case has been a 3 year old mare that came in neurologic.  The horse had reared up and flipped over on Easter Sunday, went into a seizure and once she eventually made it to her feet, was clearly neurologic.  The owners put her in a stall where she was very distressed and ended up scraping her eye along the stall wall.  When she presented to SVEC, her neurologic symptoms had much improved since the initial incident, with the remaining deficits being a drooped ear and lip, deviated muzzle, and some unsteadiness on her feet.  However, the eye is now the more concerning issue as the ulcer in her eye has penetrated through the entire cornea and the iris is prolapsed forward into the hole.  She doesn’t appear to have vision in that eye, so eventually it will need to be removed, but her neurologic status must first be improved before putting her under anesthesia due to the difficulty of the recovery. 

So, for now, we are medically treating the eye.  Dr. Jones inserted a lavage system with a pump so medication is continually being put into her eye.  She is getting an antibiotic, anti-fungal, and atropine to dilate the eye and help reduce the pain.  Systemically, she is getting Banamine (an NSAID) for the inflammation that is causing the cranial nerve deficits and vitamin E to promote nerve health.  Dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, is also effective for inflammation associated with nerve injuries, but it delays wound healing and only exacerbate the situation with the eye, hence the use of Banamine.  She will be heading home on Monday and her owners will continue her treatment there.  I am very interested to see how her condition progresses and whether or not her sight comes back.  I may be discussing the removal of her eye in the next month or two. 

That’s all for now!