Week 1 and 2 from Brown Equine Clinic

It's been a whirlwind - probably not much different than what you are all experiencing. Brown Equine Clinic is very busy with standard bred racing horses. We do lots of lameness exams, radiographs, and injections. I've seen a handful of ventriculocordectomies at Brown Equine hospital. The goal of this procedure is to improve the breathing of a horse with left recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis. A tie back can improve the breathing of the horse but costs more and puts the horse at risk because they must be under anesthesia. To do the procedure, we have the horse in stocks, sedated with the head supported. The larynx is doused with carbocaine, which lasts longer than lidocaine in the event that the surgery takes longer than predicted. We do a line block on the skin beneath the larynx with lidocaine and make an incision through the tissues to the cricothyroid membrane. With help from an endoscope passed nasally, we can remove the ventricular saccules and vocal cords. When this scar tissue forms it makes the arytenoids stiffer so that the horse can breathe more efficiently. This is important for draft horses who do not handle anesthesia very well. I've seen more of these surgeries performed on the big guys in general. Per Dr. Brown, he sees an improvement rate of about 90%. No pictures because I get to guide the endoscope and my hands are pretty busy!

-Brandi