mindofavet

Pregnancy is not without its challenges.   There are several hazards the mare must avoid or overcome.   Rupture of and subsequent hemorrhage from the mid-uterine artery is the most common cause of death in mares post partum.   The external iliac artery, utero-ovarian artery, and uterine artery have also been implicated. 1   Uterine contractions and obstetrical manipulations further increase stress on the vessel wall. 2   Although usually considered a problem of the postpartum period, reports exist of cases in the peripartum period. 1, 3   Peripartum hemorrhage has been reported to occur at any age, however older mares are considered to be at greater risk due to age-related degeneration of arterial vessels. 4 Hemorrhage can occur into the peritoneal cavity, within the broad ligament of the uterus, within the uterine wall (mural hemorrhage), or into the uterine lumen.   Combinations of these may occur.   Hemorrhage into the peritoneal cavity leads...

The closer you get, the more you worry about the risk of losing.  Regrettably, even with all the best intentions there is an inherent rate of pregnancy loss.  Bosh et al . 1 demonstrated a 12.9% pregnancy loss between day 40 of gestation and foaling. 1   In a review of 3,527 aborted fetuses and placentas, stillborn foals or foals that died <24 hours after birth, 34% were due to feto-placental infection or placentitis of unidentified etiology. 2   Bacterial infection caused 628 (17.8%) of these losses.  Complications of birth led to the demise of 679 (19%), congenital anomalies including contracted foals counted for 348 (10%), and no diagnosis was identified in 585 (17%) of these cases.  Other causes included placental edema, premature placental separation, twins, umbilical cord anomalies, placental villous atrophy, body pregnancy, fetal diarrhea, and neoplasia.  Some things you can change, some you can’t.  I’ll talk about many of these at a la...

Monitoring of the health of the equine fetus is based upon ultrasonographic evaluation, observation of the mare, and clinical intuition. Transabdominal and transrectal ultrasonography allow assessment of CTUP, fetal fluids and fetal viability.   Renaudin et al . published the evaluation of the combined thickness of the uterus and the placenta (CTUP) of 9 normal mares throughout gestation. 1   During field application of transrectal ultrasonographic assessment of the CTUP in 477 Thoroughbred mares, placentitis was diagnosed in 3.1%.   The abortion rate among mares with placentitis was 15.8%, with pregnancy loss occurring at an average of 62 days (range 7 to 90 days) after detection and treatment onset.   Of the non-aborting placentitis cases, 87% produced live foals with a mean gestational length of 327±2.23 days.   The mean birth weight of live foals from affected mares (48.8±1.56 kg) was not significantly different from foals born from unaffected mares (53.9±...

  These days, it is more likely to start with spilling coffee over your keyboard.   Buy the big box of Goldfish ™ because this writing thing will take a while. Here’s a roadmap to get you started: Search the relevant literature, whether veterinary and other: make sure a similar case is not already out there.   Google Scholar makes this easy, but it isn’t the only database to search.   Expect to find cases supporting your ideas, and perhaps some that don’t. Get your case information NOW: not when you can get around to it, because you won’t.   You do not want to be looking for things while you are writing. Pick a target journal (or three): read around and decide which one publishes reports along the lines of what you want to write.   Remember to understand the author guidelines to save reviewers (and you) much more work later on hammering your manuscript into shape.   Guys, I am speaking directly to you, this is a time to read the directions. ...

We all are a little bit excited about what we do.  It would be true to say that most people don’t understand how there is fascination in disease, more so when things are a bit gross to the casual observer.  What is even better is when you see something completely new, something not wanting to follow the established playbook, or something out of that playbook rip it up and take you on a rollercoaster.  So, what do good friends do when that happens?  They share. The things we tend to remember are usually associated with a story – everyone has at least one good/bad/off-color joke ready to go. While primary research and controlled studies dominate the literature, case reports are still a great way to tell people how things went.  Common things occur commonly, but we all hope to recognize the rare disease when we see it, or the routine when it tries to hide.  Kudos to the power of observation.  Parkinson’s Disease was first described in 1817 by James Parkin...