MERIAL RACEDAY
Panellists for the 2016 Newmarket CPD raceday
for environmental sampling of Aspergillus can be taken.
2. Be vigilant!
Be vigilant when monitoring disease; vets rely on clients to detect clinical signs such as coughing, nasal discharge, slow recovery post exercise, abnormal rectal temperatures, systemic illness and poor performance as early as possible. Coughing and high rectal temperatures are probably the two most important symptoms to be aware. If you have an animal coughing, it has an 85% chance of having inflammatory airway disease. Waiting for snotty noses and horses to show a decrease in performance is probably waiting too late. Think about other factors that may effect the horse, such as whether there was change in service of the gallops, or how the animals were behaving at home compared to at the racecourse. Monitoring disease: Endoscopy is the standard test of choice used to monitor respiratory disease, and usually involves taking a sample of fluid from within the lungs, via tracheal wash or bronchoalveolar lavage. Using these samples to analyse the types of immune cells and populations of bacteria within the lungs, help diagnose which disease the horse is suffering from. 1. IAD: These horses will have a cough and slightly snotty nose, or more subtle signs such as loss of performance or slow recovery, but will have a lot of tracheal secretions on endoscopy. Cell types found in
lung fluid samples can include an increased percentage of polymorphonuclear cells. 2. Acute airway infection: These horses will have a high degree of tracheal mucopus on endoscopy, increased nucleated cells and neutrophils, and intracellular bacteria. When culturing these samples, there will be a significant growth of bacteria. 3. Recurrent airway obstruction or Equine asthma: Horses will show clinical signs of obstructive airway disease, they will use abdominal effort to breath, on an inclining scale of severity. Horses will experience recurrent reversible episodes in response to an environmental challenge. This airway obstruction is reversible (in part) by bronchodilators or clean air, and their lung fluid samples will contain increased levels of neutrophils. RAO is often seen in older national hunt horses.
3. Be therapeutically aggressive!
Manage the trigger factors – environmental management is key. Ensure all yard staff are adhering to good management practice as previously discussed. l Treat the inflammatory response with bronchodilators, mucolytics, steroids or antibiotics (if needed). These therapeutics are often delivered by inhalation therapy which provides a high dose of the drug locally. The benefits such as reduced total drug dose, reduced systemic absorption, reduced risk of adverse reactions, reduced drug costs and rapid onset of action, l
make this route of therapy very attractive. However, when using these inhaled therapeutics, it is imperative to know how to, to ensure an effective dose is being inhaled. Nebulisation, if tolerated by the horse, is a efficient and easy route of administration.
Can a horse be an athlete after critical care?
Kevin Corley (Anglesey Lodge Equine Hospital, Ireland) began his lecture by addressing what defines critical care. The triggers that necessitate critical care vary enormously, resulting in a lack of definition in both human and equine medicine; human hospitals tend to define it as care of any patient treated in the intensive care unit. Kevin suggests that a possible definition in equine medicine, could be any horse that stays on continuous intravenous fluid therapy for more than 24 hours. Pleuropneumonia, surgical colic and diarrhoea are amongst the more frequent reasons that adult horses may require critical care. Pleuropneumonia, commonly known as shipping fever, describes inflammation of the lungs and pleura (tissue surrounding the lungs). Factors that predispose a horse to this condition can include travelling over 500 miles, especially if their heads are tied up and they are exercised quickly after transport, contracting viral respiratory disease and being exposed to horses with respiratory disease. Unfortunately this disease can occur ISSUE 55 TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM
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