Weeks 1 and 2 RREH Surgery

When you first show up to work as a surgery tech at Rood and Riddle, you may think you have a good idea of what goes on each day in the hospital. Your preconceived notions may even be somewhat true, but you can’t truly understand how it all happens until you’ve gotten your hands dirty and participated in the organized intensity that sees as many as 20 or more horses undergo surgery in a single day. I immediately realized this the first day on the job. When you arrive you know what your job is; you know that you’re supposed to help out…but your primary focus becomes trying to wrap your mind around the orchestration of it all while you do your best to stay out of the way. This was essentially my first day-the smell of the horses mixed with a multitude of cleaning products, the sounds of the hoist raising and dropping horses, and the acute awareness of what is sterile (do not touch!!!) and what isn’t. As the hours and days moved on, I gradually became more involved and started to develop an idea of how the day is actually organized. The horses scheduled for surgery are written up on the board (some are scheduled and some are added as emergencies). The surgeon operating on the horses adds a number to the board next to each horse as the order in which they will be operated on becomes clear. The horse with the next number is retrieved, dropped in a recovery stall and hoisted onto a surgery table. The surgical site is clipped (most of the time) and prepped, generally with a rough and a sterile scrub. Once the sterile scrub is complete, the horse can be moved into the surgery suite and the surgery can begin. At this point other surgery techs have begun to retrieve and prep the next horse destined for the same surgery suite. At the end of the surgery the site is bandaged and the horse is moved to a recovery stall, where it is hoisted off the bed and onto a recovery mat. Recovery personnel are called and the tech working on that surgery goes back to the surgery room to open the room for the next procedure.

 One critical point that keeps this whole process flowing well is communication. Communicating everything is crucial to being efficient and effective at the job while maintaining the high standards of the hospital. It’s been a solid two weeks and I still have a lot to learn about the individual skills and processes that make this game of ‘surgical Tetris’ (a popular comparison in the clinic) function so smoothly. That said, I’m making significant progress and I’m looking forward to the coming weeks and learning so much more.

So, what surgeries have I seen/been in on? A majority of the surgeries are orthopedic in nature-transphyseal screws, transphyseal bridges, joint arthroscopies and fracture repairs. I’ve also been in on a postpartum colic, in which the mare had about 8 feet of dead intestine that required resection and a jejunocecostomy. 

The darker intestine is very likely no longer viable and requires resection.

Nearing completion, with a successful jejunocecostomy.

Another interesting surgery was a sinus mass removal-the horse had a bony mass in its sinuses that took up a lot of space! Warning: sinus surgeries are bloody!

The mass that was removed-hard as bone.

I also had the privilege of being there for a neck plate surgery, where multiple surgeons work together to place a stabilizing plate along the cervical vertebrae of a horse to stabilize vertebral canal and correct some compression of the spinal cord .

Pretty great first couple of weeks!