Crazy fast colic; what killed my horse?

[SusanO]

This is what a vet told me years ago about using banamine. When a horse feels pain/ discomfort - his digestive system slows down. So now that his digestive system has slowed down he is having pressure from gas and the contents of the intestines that are not moving and this pressure causes him discomfort. That pain/ discomfort slows his digestive system further. Sometimes. if banamine is given early enough in this viscous cycle the horse is not so painful and his digestive system starts working again like it should. This makes sense to me. Of course if you wait until the horse has been painful for a long time this won’t work. Also banamine is not going to fix a torsion or twist. However these can happen because of the backed up gas and ingestia in the intestines. 5cc of banamine will not mask that much pain.

The vet clinic I use now urges their clients to use a “colic pak” when your horse becomes painful. Of course after you have talked to one of the vets and discussed symptoms with him. If that doesn’t work pretty fast they recommend a trip to the clinic where the horse can be monitored round the clock and given fluids as needed. As a general rule the faster you notice something is “off” the better the outcome. They are not proponents of endless walking. And they see a LOT of colic cases.

However sometimes there are internal things going on that the horse can’t tell you about. So no matter how you treat the horse it is not going to make it. This sounds like one of those times.

[IPEsq]

Having recently lost a horse to a colonic twist, a 1000lb dose of Banamine isn’t going to mask that. It took A LOT of drugs to get him to stop throwing himself around the padded room so that he could walk down the hall to surgery.

I think the fever would not be unusual with a small intestine problem that led to the excess fluid in the body cavity. I’ve seen fever with a number of colics especially those with positive belly tap, reflux, and/or small intestine involvement.

My speculation would be some kind of displacement that resolved but had damaged the tissue too much. Might be easier to determine if blood was run at the time to check CBC, lactate, etc. But while that’s SOP for the hospital intake for colic not so much for your typical on the farm treatment. Might explain her seeming improvement though? I hope the pathologists are able to piece together an answer for you.

I’m very sorry for your loss.

[Equkelly]

So sorry for your loss. Colic really just isn’t fair. The truth is a lot of colics just happen for no reason and that makes us want to seek some sort of explanation when there just might not be one. And that is hard for a lot of people to grasp so that’s why people need to insert their opinion on the course of action you took even though, whatever you did or didn’t do probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

Is it possible it was some sort of enteritis? I thought they’re usually pretty painful and they last for awhile but with the small intestine looking weird that’s what I thought of. Please keep us updated, I’m curious as well.

My condolences again and please remember you did everything right.

[JB]

Yes, banamine is a pretty good smooth muscle pain reducer, so if you can reduce the pain from spasming intestines, for example, you may help them relax and potentially help resolve gas issues, or mild impactions.

[StormyDay]

@IPEsq

Having recently lost a horse to a colonic twist, a 1000lb dose of Banamine isn’t going to mask that. It took A LOT of drugs to get him to stop throwing himself around the padded room so that he could walk down the hall to surgery.

I think the fever would not be unusual with a small intestine problem that led to the excess fluid in the body cavity. I’ve seen fever with a number of colics especially those with positive belly tap, reflux, and/or small intestine involvement.

My speculation would be some kind of displacement that resolved but had damaged the tissue too much. Might be easier to determine if blood was run at the time to check CBC, lactate, etc. But while that’s SOP for the hospital intake for colic not so much for your typical on the farm treatment. Might explain her seeming improvement though? I hope the pathologists are able to piece together an answer for you.

I’m very sorry for your loss.

I’m sorry for your loss also
She was not a candidate for surgery, so likely the outcome would have been the same here.

No news yet. Waiting on slides and bacterial identification.

[trubandloki]

@4horses the more you post in this thread the more obvious you are making it that you do not really know what you are talking about on this subject.

When I lost my horse to strangulation lipoma I can tell you that the Banamine did not mask anything. There is no way a single dose of Banamine will make a really sick horse seem not really sick.

@StormyDay I am so very sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your horrible experience with us so we can all learn something from it.

[Jealoushe]

@4horses

The reason I do not immediately give banamine is because I have seen things like this before… Neighbor had a horse with colic in the late afternoon, gave banamine, and the horse died sometime during the night. Didn’t have the vet up. I’m sure she thought the horse looked fine, after she administered the banamine…

Another horse I was caring for had colic. I called the owner who suggested Banamine, horse was fine for 6 hours or so, by midnight the horse was sick again. I called the owner again, they wanted me to give another dose which got the horse through to morning. Had the vet up at 8 am on a Sunday morning to tube the horse, as he was still painful.

”‹”‹Fortunately he recovered just fine. Not my horse…I would have had the vet up sooner.

From my experience, it effectively masks the pain for 6-8 hours, and if you have not treated the cause of the colic, the horse will be painful again.

It is a powerful painkiller and it can cover up the symptoms so you may not recognize if something is going seriously wrong. Sort of like taking morphine for a stomachache.

To the OP, this is not a criticism of you in any way. I just want people to be aware that by giving banamine, you risk the horse deteriorating because they can’t tell us their level of pain. This is the risk you take every time you administer the drug. Most people find that risk acceptable. In non-surgical colics, the horse usually recovers just fine with a dose of banamine and time.

But when things go badly wrong, that is when you need to know how painful your horse is. If your horse needs surgery, the sooner you recognize that it is a surgical colic, the better.

Again it isn’t a promise of survival. The horse could get severely ill without being that painful, or he could be severely painful without being at risk of death.

We weigh these risks every time we administer medications to our horses. I will hesitate before giving banamine. Do I have to give this drug? Can I just watch and wait? If i give the drug, i need to be there when that drug wears off.

”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹

unless you are the visiting vet to the OP you should kindly sthu

Very sorry to the OP for the loss of your loved one.

[Ghazzu]

Flunixin meglumine will not mask severe pain, though it may lessen it somewhat.
Owners should contact the DVM and take vital signs and record them before administration, to provide a baseline.
And avoid giving it to an animal suffering from dehydration.
The major “problem” with owners administering the stuff is when they give multiple doses before making a call to the DVM, and they end up kicking the can down the road with an issue like an impaction or a partial obstruction. Then, by the time the animal is seen, they’re 6-8 hours along whatever pathologic process is occurring.

[SporthorseFun]

OP, so sorry for your loss. That was a hard situation for you and your mare. Keep us posted.

[x-halt-salute]

@4horses

The reason I do not immediately give banamine is because I have seen things like this before…

[…]

It is a powerful painkiller and it can cover up the symptoms so you may not recognize if something is going seriously wrong. Sort of like taking morphine for a stomachache.

This is absurd. Both because banamine is not like morphine, and because vets do indeed sometimes administer opioids to horses for severe colic pain (or “stomachaches” in your parlance). And horses are sometimes so painful from colic that even opioids don’t provide significant relief … let alone a dose of banamine … as so many of us here know from heart-wrenching firsthand experiences.

For every horse owner who uses banamine inappropriately in a case of colic, there’s another one so eager to castigate others for administering banamine to a colicky horse that they can’t tell good use from bad. This worn-out moralizing screed against banamine for colic has no place in a thread about the loss of a horse. Especially a thread about a horse lost to colic in spite of appropriate veterinarian involvement.

OP, I’m incredibly sorry for your loss. It’s terrifying how quickly colic can turn from “responding well” to a worst case scenario. I’m glad to hear that so far your others are in good health and you have a good team helping you figure out what happened. I hope you can find peace even if you never have fully satisfying answers.

[asb_own_me]

@StormyDay , I’m so sorry for your loss. Not that you need another random person here on COTH to tell you this, but YOU. DID. ALL. THE. RIGHT. THINGS.

Louder for the one complete f#ckw!t who has doubled down on his/her uncalled for comments - STORMYDAY YOU. DID. ALL. THE. RIGHT. THINGS.

I lost my best broodmare just a couple months ago to a monstrous impaction colic, the size of which the vets had never seen before. In the clinic begging it to resolve for 25 days, medically, then surgically, then medically…then we had to let her go.

Banamine is NOT going to cover up the type of crisis pain the one jerk on this thread is implying it will. Banamine won’t touch that kind of pain…and unfortunately I now know from firsthand experience that they don’t have anything save euthanasia that WILL.

[24eventer]

I am so sorry for your loss! We lost my son’s horse to colic years ago. We took him to surgery and found a large amount of black/dead intestine in him as well with no explanation. No twists, no entrapments, everything else seemed normal. The vet’s guess was he was throwing blood clots, but no idea why. We were given the option to remove the intestine that was dead, but it was the max they could remove with a decent prognosis, or to put him down on the table. We opted to euthanize him. Although the vet said he could do it, he also said we have no idea why the intestine is dying and it will most likely keep happening, even if we remove the bad tissue now. His best guess, was blood clots.

[Laurierace]

It never fails that some asshat on COTH manages to take a bad situation and make it that much worse. Someone is always waiting in the wings to throw salt on the wound. That is why when I lost my heart horse suddenly to a strangulating lipoma I did not post a word of it here. I was in too much pain to withstand the inevitable. It’s too bad really.
OP, I am sorry you lost your horse in such a mysterious way but am thankful that the necropsy at least showed that surgery would not have fixed it so you didn’t have that what if weighing on your mind. Godspeed.

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

OP, I’m so sorry. I lost one to colic last year, and like you, we never really understood what the issue was. But I didn’t do a necropsy, so hopefully your vets will come up with the solution.

You did everything right. You were on the phone with the vet; you administered Banamine (which, despite one person’s opinion, DOES resolve many colics just fine, as I’ve personally experienced). Sometimes there just is no explanation for it. We’ve all had that one animal that we could not save, no matter what, and we never knew why.

The best we can offer you is hugs and jingles. I wish I could offer more. I agree that it doesn’t sound like a traditional colic, as her intestines and stomach were still clearly working. I’d suspect that those suggesting the strangulated intestine might be onto something. If she rolled at some point, it could have let the intestine slip back through the hole, but not in time to avoid the damage.

[Equkelly]

My vet says that if they respond really well to banamine it’s usually a good sign. When they don’t respond, and just blow through the banamine like it didn’t even do anything, that’s when you need to be thinking about a field trip to the hospital. I agree with everyone else, if something’s really wrong bannamine isn’t going to mask it. OP never could’ve known and did everything right IMO.

[Where_sMyWhite]

Sure is easy for some to sit in their armchair and throw stones…

I’m with the majority. OP, now you know. You made all the right decisions. An early dose of banamine with support from vet is the ticket. When they blow through it in short order… you know you have a problem.

Sorry for your loss

[Critter]

So, so sorry. I lost one mare to what we thought was a very severe colic. Presented like a small intestine twist. Initially it seemed under control (with vet treating) and then went bad fast and she went septic. We had a necropsy done…they found nothing wrong with her intestines. Turned out it was a very bad case of pancreatitis. The only consolation is that what we were doing for treatment was the only option…so we did the best we could for her with supportive care. I hope you get some answers.

[StormyDay]

So I got the results today. Nothing too surprising. diagnosis was a twist that resolved itself before death. However, the intestine was too damaged which lead to toxemia, cardiovascular collapse, and death.
There is some rod shaped bacteria that they are doing gram staining on, probably the cause of the toxemia.
I will never know why she never presented as being in such dire straights. It’s possible that if I had immediately trailered her to the hospital when it started she may have made it. But, I’m not sure they would have been able to diagnose her in time, and even if they did I likely wouldn’t have put her through the surgery. On top of that, the location of the twist would have made surgery very, very difficult to impossible. She basically would have had to lose 10 feet from her stomach down.
So that’s it. Nothing contagious or worrying to my other horses. Just a freak accident.

[JB]

I don’t know why anyone would think to rush a horse with her presentation to the hospital :no: And it sounds like even if she’d presented as truly painful (and yeah, how she didn’t is beyond me :eek: ) it would have been dicey from the start.

I’m really glad you have these quantifiable results telling you nothing else could have been done given the info you had. I’m still so sorry you lost her

[Renn_aissance]

I am so very sorry for your loss.

I also want to thank you for sharing your horse’s presentation and the outcome of the exam, so that we could learn alongside you.