Greetings from Brown Equine!

      The first two and a half weeks here at Brown have been quite eventful!

Most of the scheduled appointments revolve around lameness evaluations, mostly involving standardbred racehorses; however we have seen most of the other breeds in my short time here as well. 

       There have been a handful of surgeries in my time here, some planned and some not so much. We have had a couple colics in the past few weeks. One was sent over for a nephrosplenic entrapment, in which the large colon becomes entrapped in the nephrosplenic ligament. Fortunately for him, a handy drug was given called phenylephrine which will shrink the spleen, in hopes of allowing the colon to drop back down to its correct position. By the time he arrived the ultrasound revealed a kidney positioned right next to the spleen on the left side of the abdomen, which indicates that there is no longer any colon trapped in-between the two. Another one of our colic emergencies did not have the same luck as the first. When we opened up his abdomen, Dr. Provost quickly realized that he had a strangulation of some sort, cutting off the blood supply to parts of his small intestine. Although in most cases, large portions of the small intestine can be resected without major issues, this horse had dead intestine reaching towards the illeocecal junction. Anatomically, this part of the intestine is attached to the dorsal side of the horse, and basically unreachable from a ventral incision. The luck was not on that pony's side that night.

       Another interesting case was a horse that came in for a mass on his sheath. Given that this horse was a gray and the mass appeared black, the differentials narrow down to one pretty quickly: melanoma. We removed the mass, and on cut section sure enough it was proven to be just that. 

     Occasionally we have a guest surgeon come down from Cornell University to fill in or do her own surgeries in our facility named Dr. Hackett. This past week she did a very interesting surgery called an alar fold resection. This horse had a history of breathing issues which after many other surgeries was mostly fixed. However she still seemed to be making noises while breathing so this procedure was preformed in which parts of her alar folds were removed to allow for better air passage. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Lisa Reznik