Summer in Lexington, KY

Greetings to everyone from Lexington, KY!

My name is Megan, and I am working for the summer as a surgery technician at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital. This hospital employs over 50 veterinarians, and currently has approximately 10 interns (both rotating and ambulatory) and 2 residents. RREH serves just about every type of horse you can imagine, but as you might guess, we see quite a few racing thoroughbreds from this great Bluegrass state. The hospital provides services in internal medicine, podiatry, surgery, radiology, neurology, theriogenology, regenerative medicine… really, almost any equine medical service you might ever need. Thus, even in the few short days that I have been here, I have been exposed to many new techniques and services that are rarely offered elsewhere.

For instance, today Drs. Steve Reed (neurology) and Brett Woodie (surgery) performed a “basket” surgery on a show Hackney pony. What is a “basket” surgery, you ask? This procedure was developed at Washington State’s CVM in order to stabilize vertebral bodies that are injured, arthritic, etc. and are causing damage and functional impairment to the spinal cord itself. It involves fusing two adjacent vertebral bodies by means of an implant, specifically in this case, a Cloward Bagby Basket or a Seattle Slew implant.

This surgery aims to correct cervical stenotic myelopathy, a.k.a. Wobbler’s Syndrome, a condition in which the vertebral canal impinges on the spinal cord, especially when the neck is flexed, causing the horse to become ataxic (exhibit abnormal gaits), and lose motor and sensory coordination in its limbs. The most common reasons that this condition occurs include cervical vertebral stenosis (the canal or points along the canal may be too narrow for the spinal cord to pass through), cervical vertebral malformation (deformities of the vertebral bodies or the canal itself), or osteoarthropathy/degenerative joint disease affecting the articulating surfaces of the vertebrae.

Here’s a fun fact about basket surgeries: one of the first successful basket surgeries was done on none other than Seattle Slew, the 1977 Triple Crown winner, in 2002. His owners began a fund through the Washington State CVM to promote equine spinal cord research.

Enough with the veterinary jargon… I will probably say this in every blog, but I feel so blessed to be in such a beautiful city that truly values its equine industry. Lexington is truly one of the meccas of the horse world - if you are an equine enthusiast and have never visited, I highly encourage it! Hopefully I will be able to share some photos of the big, fancy farms, the rolling hills, and the Horse Park in the next few blogs, but I will leave you with this for now: 

This is a statue of the legendary Man O' War at the entrance to the Kentucky Horse Park. (http://kyhorsepark.com/)