Side note:
Before you crack out the ammo ;), using “it” to refer to an animal IS gramatically correct. Being the good little English teacher, that is what I use during regular business hours. Everywhere else, he or she. :winkgrin:
Nick & Dan are associates in same practice. I saw more of Dan putting on robert jones (look it up, no it’s definately not inflatable but would be much easier if it were!) but it really doesn’t matter who did most of this or that. Everyone was in&out doing what was needed. As well, it’s such a difficult bandage that one person could easily use help. It’s exausting applying those R.Js actually & if you have a bad back…Nick is a little on the hefty side 
& I didn’t see him sweatyhuffy&puffyredfaced so assumed Dan did most the work
VirginiaBred, thank you for the continued updates on Barbaro.
I know infection and blood flow have been a concern for him, does anybody know if there has been a “milestone met” so-to-speak in regards to those two issues? If infection were to set in, would it have shown up by now? As well as blood flow, wouldn’t that have been an issue by now?
Praying like heck for him and all involved, including owners, trainers, and all those who have been entrusted with his care during recovery.
Barbaro on Friday: His Condition Is Excellent
<a href="http://channels.bloodhorse.com/images/content/BarbaroShoeSm.jpg">http://channels.bloodhorse.com/images/content/BarbaroShoeSm.jpg</a>
Special shoe worn by Barbaro during recovery from surgery.
Photo: University of Pennsylvania Five days after undergoing surgery, Barbaro was in excellent condition, according to a report from the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center. “He looks good, everything is fine, and his appetite is particularly good today,” said Dr. Dean Richardson, the chief of surgery at the hospital, in a statement issued at 11 a.m. (EDT) Friday.
Barbaro fractured his right hind leg above and below the ankle during the May 20 running of the Preakness Stakes (gr. I). The injuries to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands winner were both career-ending and life-threatening.
The latest report about Barbaro’s condition included information about a special three-part, glue-on horseshoe, designed and patented by the Farrier Service at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine, that was applied to the hoof on Barbaro’s injured leg.
“One of the complications that can occur following leg fractures in horses is the risk of developing laminitis in the opposite foot from bearing extra weight,” said New Bolton Center farrier Rob Sigafoos. “To reduce this risk, we applied a supportive shoe to Barbaro’s left hind foot immediately following the surgery for the fracture of his right hind leg.”
http://tcm.bloodhorse.com/images/BarbaroShoe.jpg
Sigafoos explained that the shoe is designed to reduce the risk of laminitis in several ways:
By supporting the sole of the left hind foot; By containing materials that minimize weakening and possible infection of the sole; By being built up to extend the length of the left hind foot, which compensates for the additional length of the right hind limb created by the cast.
Barbaro remains in intensive care at the George D. Widener hospital.
From Tim Woolley Racing Blog:
Edit 30: Another good night (saturday night) for Barbaro. Spoke with Michael Matz this morning who had spoken with Dr. Dean Richardson. I also spoke with Michelle Matz, Michael’s oldest daughter, who works for Michael. She visited Barbaro yesterday afternoon at about 3 pm and said how well he was doing. It has now been a week, lets keep hoping the news continues to be positive. It does still remain very much day to day at this point.
posted sunday, 8:20 am.
[QUOTE=jparkes]
I know infection and blood flow have been a concern for him, does anybody know if there has been a “milestone met” so-to-speak in regards to those two issues? QUOTE]
I can’t address those two issues but I did hear on Wire to Wire that the danger on laminitis was greatest during weeks 4-6.
my fingers are crossed.
I am sooo happy…
to hear that the big hansdome man is doing so well!! Thank you Virginia bred…for all your updates! Still jingling for the boy!!! :yes:
NBC blacksmith is the best out there for corrective and ortho work. He is in good hands!:yes:
The 
JOAN FAIRMAN KANES / Inquirer
Dean Richardson, 52, is the chief of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s school of veterinary medicine at the New Bolton Center in Kennett Square.
A sinus surgery lasted 2 1/2 hours. Four more were spent taking a bladder stone out of a show horse. Dean Richardson was still at a friend’s equine hospital in Florida on May 20 as Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, was saddled for the Preakness Stakes.
Post a Comment Richardson wasn’t going to miss the race.
“He had blood all over him, and he was doing it in flip-flops, so we hosed him off,” said Byron Reid, a veterinarian in Loxahatchee, Fla., just outside West Palm Beach.
The two men watched the Preakness on a six-inch screen in the hospital.
“You could see enough,” Richardson said. “That’s the sad thing. It was just crushing. My stomach started churning. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a very bad injury. I knew which horse it was.”
Richardson, 52, is the chief of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s school of veterinary medicine at New Bolton Center in Kennett Square. Though he had done quite a few surgeries over the years for Barbaro’s trainer, Michael Matz, Richardson didn’t get on the phone right away.
“I was waiting for my phone to ring,” Richardson said. “The people on site have the work to do. Then the phone calls started coming.”
Within 30 minutes of Barbaro’s devastating right hind leg fractures in the first furlong in Maryland, a decision was made: Get him to New Bolton. That was his best chance for survival. Thirty minutes after the horse had “catastrophically” broken three bones, Barbaro’s digital X-ray arrived in Richardson’s e-mail.
“I knew it was going to be a bad fracture,” the surgeon said. “When I saw the radiograph, it was worse than I had hoped. I tried to sleep, but didn’t succeed real well.”
By Monday evening, a national newscast had the words Saving Barbaro behind the anchorman’s head. But few on Saturday evening had been convinced that saving the colt was even likely.
“Nobody was about to put this horse down at the racetrack without giving him a chance at a hospital,” Richardson said. “It just wasn’t going to happen.”
All sorts of lightning-fast, high-stakes calculations had been made at Pimlico Race Course. Jockey Edgar Prado had pulled up the horse expertly. By all accounts, the veterinarians skillfully had applied a splint to the leg. Richardson also saw something else.
“The horse’s tremendous athletic ability, to pull up,” he said. “Look at that tape, and the horse literally galloped on three legs for a few strides. He didn’t drive his bad leg into the ground hard. That saved his life.”
•
There wasn’t much question Richardson was performing the surgery. Never mind that he had worked on Matz’s horses and gotten to know him well, or that co-owner Gretchen Jackson is on the board of overseers of Penn’s veterinary school.
New Bolton’s pool-recovery system made the place ideal for the surgery, and Richardson is one of a handful of surgeons, one former colleague said, equipped to tackle the catastrophic injuries suffered by Barbaro.
“I think all of us in this job who fix horses for a living know that Dean is somewhere in another space,” said Patricia Hogan of the New Jersey Equine Clinic, who was his student researcher for a year.
In fact, he wrote the book on a lot of this stuff.
“All major textbooks that deal with equine-fracture repair, Dean is an author,” said Alan Ruggles, a surgeon at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky.
Roy and Gretchen Jackson offered immediately to rent a jet to get Richardson back to Pennsylvania, but he didn’t think that was a necessary expense.
“That would be like grandstanding, I thought,” Richardson said.
He got on a US Airways flight out of West Palm Beach bound for Philadelphia shortly before 8 a.m. last Sunday.
“I got the back-row seat, next to the toilet,” Richardson said. “If you want a real news story, [the flight] was on time.”
As long as the horse’s condition didn’t demand earlier intervention, the surgery wasn’t going to be earlier than Sunday afternoon.
“One of the big mistakes we used to make in the past: It’s not generally a good idea to take a very fit horse that just broke down on the racetrack, is extremely stressed, and take them into a hospital, a strange environment, place them under general anesthesia, and expect them to wake up and act like they’re halfway sane,” Richardson said. “That’s just putting the horse through way too much trauma.”
Given a chance, he said, “they start understanding that, ‘Hey, you know what, I’ve only got three legs to walk on. Let me figure out how to deal with it.’ Then their chance of waking up from anesthesia and not injuring themselves is quite a bit higher.”
The night he arrived at New Bolton, a helicopter buzzing overhead, Barbaro had calmed down considerably. First-year resident Steven Zedler saw Barbaro lie down for two naps that first night, both for about 45 minutes. The horse made sure he put his good limb underneath him.
“Horses have to lay down in order to get REM sleep,” Zedler said, referring to rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep. “One day, two days, it doesn’t matter. Long term, they start to get really sleepy and stumble occasionally. For him, it was just perfect. Some [injured] horses won’t do it.”
•
A 1974 graduate of Dartmouth, Richardson showed up at New Bolton in 1979 for his internship right after graduating from Ohio State’s veterinary school.
“I knew the day I met him he would be the best intern I ever had,” said Midge Leitch, the surgeon in charge of Richardson’s first rotation at New Bolton. “He was - he is - one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He has a tremendous ability to recall and integrate information. I didn’t know what kind of hands he had.”
She said it was like finding a kindred spirit.
“We started arguing at 5,000 decibels,” Leitch said, “to the extent, in his internship year, some of the students thought we hated each other because we argued so vehemently.”
When Richardson was an intern, Leitch said, there were even staff members who were more comfortable when he wasn’t around. It was a good thing, she said, that she had six years of experience on him.
“I think if I hadn’t that much clinical experience, I would have been intimidated,” Leitch said. “He is a powerful intellectual force, and it turns out he has magical hands.”
He has a great sense of where the pieces go, she said, but what sets him apart is his grasp of a fourth dimension. He can see possibilities.
“He will work on cases that ordinarily would be unlikely to have successful outcomes,” Leitch said.
Richardson was the reason she went into orthopedics, said Hogan, his former researcher, who got a lot of attention herself for treating Smarty Jones after his famous starting-gate injury in 2003. Hogan said Richardson’s approval “still means so much” 16 years after working with him.
Now, Richardson lectures all over the world on equine orthopedics. His research on gene therapy and cartilage repair is considered cutting-edge.
“He’s as tough on himself as on anybody else,” Leitch said. “But he’s a little tougher, so he can also take it better than anybody else. He’s into the carrot and the stick. And if there isn’t a carrot handy, by God, there’s a stick.”
There are some in his position who could - some who do - occasionally skip Grand Rounds, the weekly Thursday 8 a.m. hourlong get-together when students present their cases for critique. Richardson is there.
“The students fear his questions,” said Corinne Sweeney, the associate dean for New Bolton Center and executive hospital director. “Some of them, you can see, are so delighted when they see he is out of the country. When there are no questions, somebody will say, ‘Isn’t Dean here?’… He even will critique their grammar.”
He’s renowned for remembering the name of every horse and every owner who comes through New Bolton. But they got him once, a year or two back. One of his buddies who is a surgeon made a referral, and somebody showed up with a lame horse. Richardson gave a full evaluation, but kept saying, “This looks like my horse.” Finally, his residents and interns couldn’t hold it together any longer and admitted it. It was his horse.
He rides his own horses, plays basketball once a week, gets angry at himself too easily on the golf course, is an avid bird photographer, and not a bad cook. His wife also is a veterinarian, in private practice. They live in Landenberg, Chester County, and have a son attending an Ivy League school.
Richardson is direct, if not always loud. On Thursday, during a relatively simple procedure to straighten the crooked legs of a newborn foal, he showed a first-year resident how to put wire under the head of a screw properly so it wouldn’t slip.
“You have to make sure you pay attention to which way you twist it,” he told her, speaking evenly. “Remember, it doesn’t have to be terribly tight.”
At the news conference just before his surgery on Barbaro, Richardson came off as kind of brash. Asked what time the surgery would begin, Richardson said, matter-of-factly, “As soon as you stop asking me questions.”
•
By that time, Barbaro already was receiving anesthesia.
“I was pretty confident we were going to wake this horse up,” Richardson said. “I would have said the only reason we would put this horse down - the only reason, period - would have been if I’d taken the splint off and the foot was cold and there was an obvious loss of blood supply. I would have talked to the Jacksons at that point and discussed the possibility that it might not be fair to the horse to wake it up.”
Before the first incision was made, he knew the foot was warm and there were strong pulses in there. The skin was very badly bruised. If it had broken, the risk of infection would have increased dramatically.
“There’s serum literally kind of oozing through the surface of the skin,” Richardson said. “That’s very badly bruised. But the skin isn’t broken. It’s about as close as it could be to being broken.”
The horse was under anesthesia for almost seven hours.
“He maintained his normal body temperature throughout,” said the chief anesthesiologist, Bernd Driessen. “Most, over time, get cold… . Maybe we’ll find out sometime that, like Secretariat, he has an unusually large and powerful heart.”
The tricky part of the surgery was repairing the pastern bone, which had splintered into more than 20 pieces.
“It would be like if you broke a china bowl and you try to put it back together but you’re missing a lot of pieces,” Richardson said. “So you have to fill in those areas with a bone graft, which was taken from his pelvis.”
He was putting screws into some pieces barely more than a centimeter wide.
“We ended up doing what we’d planned; it was just harder than I’d hoped,” Richardson said. “He had rubbed a lot of the bones together [after the fractures]. There was a polishing of the bone. Instead of nice jagged pieces fitting together, they become smooth and you can’t put it together well.”
He put in 27 screws and a 16-hole steel plate, as seen the next morning in newspaper illustrations all over the country. Operating-room nurse Erin Fabre - who had been listening to the race via cell phone the day before in the OR - said of Barbaro’s operation: “It was one of the calmest surgeries I’ve been in.”
“Throughout this, it isn’t Barbaro really there,” Richardson said of the surgery. “It’s really not Barbaro. It’s a horse with a very difficult fracture. It’s Barbaro when I’m talking to the media. It’s Barbaro when you have to face the consequences if you screw something up. But, you know, it’s still the same work.”
The horse is doing well. There are still risks of infection and other problems, but the real hurdle - the one that caused Richardson to call the prognosis “a coin flip” right after the surgery - is what happens weeks from now when the cast is taken off for good. The Jacksons and Richardson agree that this horse has to be comfortable.
“In the long run, I think we all think it’s a 50-50 shot,” said Liberty Getman, one of the residents who assisted Richardson during the surgery, holding some of the smaller bone fragments while he inserted a screw.
The only good that has come out of this, a number of Richardson’s colleagues around the country mentioned, is that a linchpin of their profession got some recognition.
Not that they intend to tell him that.
“I talked to him Monday morning,” said Ruggles, the Kentucky surgeon who had trained under Richardson at New Bolton. "He’s an extremely competitive golfer. I told him, ‘I shot 76. What did you do this weekend?’ "
Contact staff writer Mike Jensen at 215-854-4489 or mjensen@phillynews.com.
Best article yet. Thanks for the post.
I agree, great article, and thank you so much for the update!
Great article! Thanks so much for the posting!!
From Tim Woolley’s Racing Blog:
Edit 32: Another good night (sunday night) for Barbaro. Michael Matz heard from Dr. Richardson this morning. As Anne Kelly (one of Michael’s exercise riders) said this am, he’s truly amazing, truly truly amazing (or something like that, we were passing each other on the horsepath at Fair Hill).
posted monday, 7:10 am
Edit 31: Spoke to Peter Brette later today (sunday) and all looks good for the day. Just wanted to thank Michael Matz, Kathy Anderson, Chuck, Peter Brette, Kim Brette, Anne Kelly and Michelle Matz (and likely I have missed someone) who have been very willing, in these very tough times, to provide timely updates when I have called, met them on the horse path at Fair Hill, or met them by their truck as they are at other barns examining horses (vets). Their efforts to provide ‘transparency’ to this situation, which seems to have captured the imagination of many throughout the country, has been awesome. Only with their support, are we able to provide timely updates.
Cheering for Barbaro
Thank you all for the continuing updates. Prayers and good wishes for Barbaro, and thanks to all of his connections. Dr. Dean Richardson you did a great job!
Thanks again to Tim Woolley’s Racing Blog:
Edit 37: Another good night (monday night) for Barbaro. I spoke briefly with Michael Matz this morning who had spoken with Dr. Dean Richardson. As I remarked how remarkable it is to another of his exercise riders, he commented how if any horse could pull through this, it would be Barbaro … he mentioned he was like a 9 year old jumper in terms of his temperament, which obviously bodes well. It seems they may not remove and replace the cast today as previously thought, but this will be confirmed no doubt via the press conference scheduled later this morning. It seems he is doing so well at this point, it only makes sense to keep the cast on for a while longer. As we mentioned yesterday, Edgar Prado is on his way to visit Barbaro. While we won’t be attending the press conference (of course) we will link to the media reports as soon as we see them.
udate 7:40 am, Fair Hill Clockers Stand.
Edit 36: Around the media: the following article from The Baltimore Sun: Journey longer than 1 3/16 miles is a vivid description of the events that followed the Preakness through to Barbaro’s surgery. It reminds me a little of Kathy Anderson’s e-mail we published in edit 14 (below). The Daily Racing Form: Matz: ‘I’m just sad for racing’ describes what we might have missed as a result of this tragic incident. It also covers the overwhelming response the Jackson’s have received from well wishers everywhere (I know Peter Brette showed them a print out of this site); and a comment from an exercise rider at Fair Hill:
"He was shook up. He said, ‘The Lord doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.’ Then he rode away a couple of strides, stopped, looked back and said, ‘He must think you’re an awfully tough guy.’ "
Lastly Lisa Leach posted the following comment below:
From the Barbaro page at horsehats.com
Dear Barbaro Fans and Supporters:As his owners we would like to be able to reply personally to each of you for your kind messages and thoughts. There have been so many good wishes that it is impossible for us to do so. We want you to know that your thoughts have been a strength to Barbaro, Michael Matz, Peter Brett, Edgar Prado, his groom, the whole vet staff that is caring for him, and ourselves. The out pouring has warmed all our hearts and we thank all of you. Please continue your thoughts and prayers for Barbaro as he continues to heal. Sincere thanks:, Gretchen & Roy Jackson
Edit 35: The Bloodhorse confirms what we have already reported: Prado Scheduled to Make First Visit to Barbaro; Horse Continues to do Well. They also note the planned removal of the cast this week:
Surgeon Dean Richardson expects this week to remove Barbaro’s cast long enough to examine the colt’s shattered right hind leg, which is being held together with a plate and 27 screws.
“Changing the cast … is significant because then he’ll be able to take a look at the leg and see how it’s healing,” said Gail Luciani, spokeswoman for the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school.
Edit 34: Peter Brette just called, and visited Barbaro this afternoon (monday afternoon). He reports that they remain very happy with Barbaro’s progress at New Bolton. Peter says he is in really good form, and basically just everyone is really happy. The cast may or may not come off tomorrow (and be replaced). It seems there will be a press conference about 9 am tomorrow at New Bolton Center, coinciding with the visit of Edgar Prado.
Edit 33: We have added more Barbaro pictures all taken the tuesday before the Preakness, by Jennifer Duffy. As with any of the other images, feel free to take them if you like. I think these new pictures are the best we have. I spoke with Edgar Prado’s agent this morning who confirmed Edgar’s visit with Barbaro for tomorrow (tuesday).
I depend on coth for all my barbaro updates, and you guys never disappoint! Thanks for all the awesome information.
drrr…that post sounded like a cheesy commericial! sorry…
That last set of pics with Barbaro(?)and rider in the woods on the road. Wow, that is great! I love all these pictures:)
Thanks again to everyone on the updates, articles and pictures. Without this site, I would know nothing! Lets keep jingling for Barbaro to have a good week:)
:lol: Cheesy commercial or not, it’s true!
Thank you a thousand times for all the wonderful updates! I was reading elsewhere this morning about all the theories of how the accident happened…gate staff problems, announcer, another horse’s foot hit his leg. This is the only place I feel the information is correct and not embelleshed in any way. Thank you so very much!
anyone see or know anything about the news conference? I thought it was at 9 for some reason, but the NB site has nothing- or at least HAD nothing at 10…
