The recovery process with equine patients can often prove just as critical as the surgical procedure. Piavita strives to keep the veterinary care team safer & provide efficient, reliable monitoring of the equine vitals – ECG, heart rate, body core temperature, respiratory rate, patient activity & much more! With the innovative introduction of the Piavet System, we can even more effectively take equine vitals while keeping technicians and handlers out of the way of the recovering equine patient!
A smoother recovery will help increase the well-being of equine patients and staff safety, while causing less stress to the patient. The Piavet System can also help decrease hospitalization times through consistent monitoring and provide cost and time efficiency for the veterinary care team. Providing more thorough observation for the equine patient will certainly result in an increased well-being of the care team.
Typically during anesthesia, a patient is being monitored by heart rate and respiratory rate monitors. Due to the vast large size of the equine patient, it is necessary to disconnect all monitors and machines when the surgical procedure is complete. Once the surgery is complete and all devices have been disconnected, there is typically not a good monitoring system available other than the human eye and skill to watch the patient during a very critical time of recovery. Horses can undergo immense stress during the post-surgical recovery phase. The Piavet System allows the veterinary care team, including the anesthesiologist, to keep a consistent, remote eye on the patient’s vitals during the entire process, from surgical preparation to a fully recovered patient. The Piavet System eliminates the veterinary care team from being “in the dark” on equine vitals during such a critical time of recovery. Veterinarians and veterinary technicians are often put into dangerous situations when equine patient’s experience difficulty with the recovery process just trying to analyze and oversee patient vitals. This potential danger is drastically reduced with the Piavet System.
THERE ARE MANY POSSIBLE COMPLICATIONS THAT COULD OCCUR AFTER THE SURGERY PROCESS DUE TO ANESTHESIA. SOME OF THESE MIGHT INCLUDE:
→ Hypoxia due to upper airway obstruction
→ Myopathy
→ Fracture due to incoordination
→ Anaphylactic shock
→ Sudden death
Mortality of healthy horses undergoing anesthesia is around 1% This percentage is approximately 100x higher than humans and the rate for small animal is around 0.08 %. Colic presents its own problems and increases the overall equine death rate in surgical patients to approximately 1.9 percent.
The duration of the surgical procedure can have an association with higher mortality rates in horses.
When a patient is standing in a box stall, it’s not always possible to measure vital signs by the conventional way. The Piavet System can assist in capturing these vitals and give a recording on how the patient is recovering while not being disturbed. This interference can often be referred to as “the white coat syndrome” and can often cause a recovering or healing horse to not show true and accurate vitals. The Piavet System captures these vitals while the patient is undisturbed, minimizing interactions to only when medically necessary. Inherent risks to the veterinary care team are also drastically reduced during this time, and the well-being of medical equipment are prolonged through the removal of machines with cords or leads.
OTHER POST-SURGICAL COMPLICATIONS CAN APPEAR DUE TO RISK FACTORS, SUCH AS THE STATE OF THE ANIMAL PRIOR TO SURGERY OR THE SURGICAL PROCEDURE. FOR EXAMPLE THE MOST COMMON IN COLIC SURGERY ARE:
→ Jugular thrombosis
→ Ileus
→ Wound suppuration
→ Incisional herniation
→ Colic
Be more informed about the state of the patient and be able to act faster in the case of sudden distress; for example, administering lifesaving epinephrine in the case of anaphylaxis.
In a large study regarding post-surgical complications, it was shown that a third of the deaths within 7 days of anesthesia and surgery were due to intra-operative cardiac arrest or post-operative cardiovascular collapse. It has been noted in recent publications that the use of alarmed monitoring devices is a key point to maintain a good vigilance. Connected with this, human error and fatigue are two major drivers of error in anesthesia and thus there is a higher risk of mortality in procedures done outside of clinical hours – the equine emergency!
With the application of the Piavet System, you will be able to guarantee to the veterinary care team and the patient’s owner(s) that the horse is under consistent, reliable surveillance.
That’s what we are determined to do – Manage your horse’s health & well-being. Are you a PiaVET?
SOURCES:
Orsini, J. and Divers, T. (2014). Equine emergencies. St. Louis: Elsevier Saunders.
Staffieri, Francesco & Driessen, Bernd. (2007). Field Anesthesia in the Equine. Clinical Techniques in Equine Practice.
Dugdale, A. and Taylor, P. (2016). Equine anaesthesia-associated mortality: where are we now?. Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia, 43(3), pp.242-255.
Staffieri, F. and Driessen, B. (2007). Field Anesthesia in the Equine. Clinical Techniques in Equine Practice, 6(2), pp.111-119.
