Saving New Lives
Feb 5, 2014 10:21:29 GMT -5
Post by Evelyn on Feb 5, 2014 10:21:29 GMT -5
This is really informative. It's long but worth reading. There are several photos. Not all the procedures are successful but those that are..............amazing.
Saving New Lives
More than 200 “problem foals” pass through the neonatal unit at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute from February to June, their chances at survival resting in the hands of an expert team. Lucky youngsters emerge with a happy ending. This is one of those stories.
BY
Claire Novak
Bloodhorse
The big mare kept everyone waiting. She was cumbersome yet placid, her belly stretched to weighty expanse. She had taken up residence in the high-risk maternity ward at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute near Lexington, pushing 30 days past her due date. She wasn’t in a hurry.
Numerous times as the days progressed, staff members thought labor was imminent—but nothing happened. She wanted her freedom in a paddock near the McGee Medical Center. She wanted to stroll through the cool spring air. She wanted, most importantly, to eat grass.
Over in the neonatal intensive care unit through two heavy sets of swinging doors, mares that had already given birth rested with their foals. There were equine babies of multiple breeds born with contracted limbs, “dummy” foals slow to suckle or respond to stimuli, neurological cases, and recumbent newborns tucked up on TempurPedic mattresses with intravenous drips and oxygen lines. Mid-March is foaling season in Kentucky, and the ward was beginning to fill.
From February to June, more than 200 foals pass through Hagyard’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The majority are offspring of the Thoroughbred industry, although some Standardbreds, Saddlebreds, Quarter Horses, drafts, as well as a variety of pleasure horses arrive. They come not only from farms in the Lexington area but also from the states surrounding Kentucky, vanned down from Indiana, in from Ohio, or up from Tennessee.
For the most part these foals are days, sometimes hours old. Arrival times are unpredictable and unscheduled, although most troublesome cases appear in the middle of the night—mares have a tendency to foal in the quiet of late night or just before the rising sun. The NICU is for sick foals; while older patients are admitted to the other care centers in the medicine department, where veterinarians deal with another 2,500 cases per year.
Those who work at this equine special care unit compare it to Johns Hopkins Hospital or the Mayo Clinic for humans. The veterinarians are adept at cutting-edge procedures, at testing and deliberation. Owners send their foals to Hagyard when they are unsure of the diagnosis, when they must get to the bottom of a problem quickly.
Hoping to prevent such an issue from arising, John Phillips of Darby Dan Farm, had sent the big mare. A month overdue, she’s the one that kept veterinarians waiting. Because cervical issues put her at risk for a complicated natural delivery, she was a candidate for elective Cesarean section. Dr. Michele Frazer had the case, with Dr. Robert Hunt to perform the procedure. They waited to give the foal optimal chance of survival, to make sure it was mature enough for a healthy delivery, and for his dam to signal her readiness to deliver. Time was waning, and there would soon be two patients instead of one.
Horsess have captured Lynne Hewlett’s heart. Working as Hagyard’s technician coordinator, she oversees approximately 30 veterinary technicians and assistants in medicine at the equine hospital, including the NICU.
“Once you get involved with horses you can hardly imagine a day going by where you can’t be touching them or be next to them,” Hewlett said. “No technician I know of does it for the money, certainly, and if you ask the veterinarian, it’s the same answer—they do it because they love what they do.”
The spring rush that draws to a close at the end of June will mark the conclusion of Hewlett’s 28th foaling season; an estimated 8,000 fillies and colts have come under her care since 1985.
“The horse is a special animal; there’s just no other way to put it,” she said. “When you compare them to people, there are so many similarities. You start off with the foals, and from the moment they’re born, they have a personality. I’ve never understood how some people just view them as livestock.”
Full article:
www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/features/saving-new-lives-134
Lynne Hewlett and intern Rebecca Skirmont care for the foal of a grade I stakes winner as his dam hovers near
Saving New Lives
More than 200 “problem foals” pass through the neonatal unit at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute from February to June, their chances at survival resting in the hands of an expert team. Lucky youngsters emerge with a happy ending. This is one of those stories.
BY
Claire Novak
Bloodhorse
The big mare kept everyone waiting. She was cumbersome yet placid, her belly stretched to weighty expanse. She had taken up residence in the high-risk maternity ward at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute near Lexington, pushing 30 days past her due date. She wasn’t in a hurry.
Numerous times as the days progressed, staff members thought labor was imminent—but nothing happened. She wanted her freedom in a paddock near the McGee Medical Center. She wanted to stroll through the cool spring air. She wanted, most importantly, to eat grass.
Over in the neonatal intensive care unit through two heavy sets of swinging doors, mares that had already given birth rested with their foals. There were equine babies of multiple breeds born with contracted limbs, “dummy” foals slow to suckle or respond to stimuli, neurological cases, and recumbent newborns tucked up on TempurPedic mattresses with intravenous drips and oxygen lines. Mid-March is foaling season in Kentucky, and the ward was beginning to fill.
From February to June, more than 200 foals pass through Hagyard’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The majority are offspring of the Thoroughbred industry, although some Standardbreds, Saddlebreds, Quarter Horses, drafts, as well as a variety of pleasure horses arrive. They come not only from farms in the Lexington area but also from the states surrounding Kentucky, vanned down from Indiana, in from Ohio, or up from Tennessee.
For the most part these foals are days, sometimes hours old. Arrival times are unpredictable and unscheduled, although most troublesome cases appear in the middle of the night—mares have a tendency to foal in the quiet of late night or just before the rising sun. The NICU is for sick foals; while older patients are admitted to the other care centers in the medicine department, where veterinarians deal with another 2,500 cases per year.
Those who work at this equine special care unit compare it to Johns Hopkins Hospital or the Mayo Clinic for humans. The veterinarians are adept at cutting-edge procedures, at testing and deliberation. Owners send their foals to Hagyard when they are unsure of the diagnosis, when they must get to the bottom of a problem quickly.
Hoping to prevent such an issue from arising, John Phillips of Darby Dan Farm, had sent the big mare. A month overdue, she’s the one that kept veterinarians waiting. Because cervical issues put her at risk for a complicated natural delivery, she was a candidate for elective Cesarean section. Dr. Michele Frazer had the case, with Dr. Robert Hunt to perform the procedure. They waited to give the foal optimal chance of survival, to make sure it was mature enough for a healthy delivery, and for his dam to signal her readiness to deliver. Time was waning, and there would soon be two patients instead of one.
Horsess have captured Lynne Hewlett’s heart. Working as Hagyard’s technician coordinator, she oversees approximately 30 veterinary technicians and assistants in medicine at the equine hospital, including the NICU.
“Once you get involved with horses you can hardly imagine a day going by where you can’t be touching them or be next to them,” Hewlett said. “No technician I know of does it for the money, certainly, and if you ask the veterinarian, it’s the same answer—they do it because they love what they do.”
The spring rush that draws to a close at the end of June will mark the conclusion of Hewlett’s 28th foaling season; an estimated 8,000 fillies and colts have come under her care since 1985.
“The horse is a special animal; there’s just no other way to put it,” she said. “When you compare them to people, there are so many similarities. You start off with the foals, and from the moment they’re born, they have a personality. I’ve never understood how some people just view them as livestock.”
Full article:
www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/features/saving-new-lives-134
Lynne Hewlett and intern Rebecca Skirmont care for the foal of a grade I stakes winner as his dam hovers near