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Horse Colic (part 1) Medical v Surgical - How Can You Tell?

Horse colic is a serious disease that needs a veterinarian's attention. But if you can not find a vet to attend, learning the basic concepts can help you determine how serious it is.

There are 2 important facts: 1) the degree of pain DOES NOT indicate the seriousness of the colic, and 2) if the colic needs surgery to correct, time is your enemy. It is better to be wrong and ship a non-surgical horse to a clinic than to be indecisive and wait till things get worse. 

In my mind, colics are either medical or surgical. There will be some that will hang out in the gray zone, but usually they show as one or the other. This video will discuss the parameters of heart rate and the horse's response to pain medication. A heart rate above 60 and a horse unresponsive to pain medication is a surgical colic.

 

Creative Commons License
Horse Health Video by Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Comments

very helpful- bring on part 2- i need to know the rest!! thanks very much. fiona
Posted @ Thursday, August 06, 2009 3:56 PM by fiona allan
Good intro to this subject and good place to reference for others.
Posted @ Saturday, August 15, 2009 6:54 AM by Helga Loncosky
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