Equine Anaesthesia
The Equine Anaesthesia Service, part of the Royal Veterinary College's Anaesthesia Team, is always on-call to provide anaesthesia and analgesia support to the clinicians of the other services within the Equine Referral Hospital. There is a wide range of experience within the Anaesthesia Team with Diplomats of the European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia as well as Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Certificate Holders in Veterinary Anaesthesia plus trained equine clinicians.
All aspects of equine anaesthesia are covered from elective procedures for healthy horses to emergency procedures for those animals requiring emergency surgery, including foals and critically ill animals. Standing surgery is also performed with a constant rate infusion of sedation and local anaesthetic techniques employed to facilitate procedures that previously would have required a general anaesthetic.
Each anaesthetic is performed by a trained veterinary anaesthetist or veterinary surgeon with anaesthetist support and they have the most up-to-date and sophisticated anaesthetic and monitoring equipment.
The facilities at the Equine Referral Hospital include a new operating theatre block with a dedicated orthopaedic theatre, a general surgery theatre and a standing surgery suite, pipeline medical gases and three induction and recovery boxes, each with a fitted recovery system. There is also a dedicated induction and recovery box in the diagnostics imaging building which allows CT and myelography to be performed whilst under general anaesthesia.
All horses are individually assessed and are under constant supervision of the anaesthetist from the start of each procedure until they are fully recovered in the recovery box. Standing surgery sedation is also performed by a trained veterinary surgeon and the patient is monitored as for a general anaesthetic. Patient safety and comfort, including analgesia, are always paramount.
The Anaesthesia Team also provide support to the Farm Animal Clinical Centre
Special Interests
- Colic anaesthesia and post-operative analgesia
- Pain management
- Partial Intravenous Anaesthesia
- Small Ruminant Anaesthesia