"Elective" Exploratory Colic Surgery - Trying to Diagnose Recurrent Colic - Massive Doubt and Guilt

[Jealoushe]

So a salt block is actually designed for cattle and livestock and not horses. Their tongues can’t get enough salt from that. I would suggest adding loose salt to the diet to ensure enough drink.

Grass or hay should be sufficient as long as its high quality and available 24/7. Some horses do have issues digesting grass though and if there are allergies that might be something to try, an all hay diet instead.

I would also suggest something that might not be considered and that is to use the Mastersons Method on this horse. I personally have found this method to be beneficial in many ways but one thing it does is get the moving and making great gut sounds. It’s easy to learn and you can do it yourself you just have to be observant and patient. It likely won’t cure the horse but it will help keep the gut moving along nicely. When I do my horses they all have a great big drink during the session which also helps.

[starsandsun]

Forgot to mention … my guy’s allergies also got WAY worse when he started going downhill. Testing done at 2 months of recurrent ulcers and 8 months showed very, very different results. Also ulcers were recurrent for years and could not get a handle on them.

Also this seemed to have been triggered by vaccines. I can match on a calendar his colics and they do align with vaccinations for pretty much everything, but PHF was the worst colic. Also, curiously, when we did antibody testing a month after the PHF vaccine, he had a reading of zero - it had burned out of his system.

[AnastasiaBeaverhousen]

Understood.
It is truly like trying to find a needle in a haystack!
Is she allergic to soy by any chance?
Soy is put into a lot of feeds.

There was a thread in the Horse Care not too long ago where a COTHer was having a problem finding a complete feed for her mare who was allergic to a lot of common items in horse feeds.

There were a lot of great suggestions in that thread. I’m hopeless at searches but I bet one of the super sleuths here will be able to find it

Is there an equine nutritionist in your area?
A lot of vets are not well-educated when it comes to equine nutrition.
Caveat: Most equine nutritionists are sponsored by the large feed mills, and may try to push to a specific product from their mill, but they still may be able to recommend a feed that will help your mare

[SusanO]

You could start with an elimination diet to see if she is sensitive to anything you are feeding her. Eliminate everything but hay. Still gassy? Try different type of hay. If the horse is fine then add in just oats. See what that does. Keep adding back in.

However if your insurance is about to run out I think exploratory surgery might be the right call. I don’t think what you are doing is working, in spite of all the vet work and I don’t think this will go away by itself. Of course surgery might not find anything out of the ordinary but maybe it will. I just wonder due to the timing and problems with the colon if something happened after she foaled that messed up the colon. Especially since these colics can be seen in mares immediately after foaling.

You have no reason to feel guilty. You have gone over and beyond what most people would do in this case and you have had very good vets.

[Ben_and_Me]

Sarah Ralston taught our equine nutrition elective — she was on the faculty at Rutgers. Looks like she is retired now but still does consults. I believe she did her PhD research on ponies who had their colons removed.

She might provide a different perspective.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-ralston-3801ba16?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

[kirbydog]

We went through a similar situation, a few years back, with BO’s hunt horse. Eventually, enough was enough, and we did the exploratory surgery.
Turns out, she had tumors on little stalks in the colon that would move around, and block everything up. When they were in the up position, they blocked passage. When they were down, things could flow through. The only option was to remove the tumors.
Tumors were removed and sent out to the lab. Mare did fine for about 48 hours post op, then went down again, really bad this time. Opened her up and the tumors had bloomed to twice as bad pre-op. Euthanized on the table, sadly
Ironically, the tumors were ovarian in origin. Mares owner was being treated at the time for breast cancer, and a year prior to all of this had a hysterectomy because she was positive for the BRAC2 (?) gene that is consistent with breast, ovarian and melanoma cancers

[Pippigirl]

@SimpleSimon, what was it the vets found through exploratory surgery if you don’t mind me asking?

[RunAmuckDog]

@RaconteurRaven, how are things?

I hope that you have found some answers and peace in the new year. Hugs.

[RaconteurRaven]

They opened her up and found absolutely nothing. I had to decide mid-surgery. She keeps displacing, if we take the colon out, she can’t displace anymore and there’s little downside. Biopsy came back completely normal. So…I dunno. I may have had them remove her colon for nothing. But this gives us a binary: if she colics again, it’s either a gas colic that she can walk off without displacing, or it’s a serious small intestinal colic and, in that case, it won’t be subtle. We essentially eliminated the middle ground out of desperation. She’s recovering at her very swanky lay-up facility. Thanks so much for asking. I was hoping to update people once she’s on safe turnout.

[gradytb]

Definitely late to the party here, but I had a OTTB with similar situation. Recurrent and continuing to increase in severity colic. Long story short, had exploratory surgery and gut was clean, clean, clean—he had a massively enlarged spleen and his colon would hook up over his kidney (?) when things backed up even a little bit. No idea what caused it other than possibly an injury from falling. He came through surgery fine, but I had to put him down after surgery because there was NO prognosis for anything changing. The TX A&M team consulted with at least 6 other vets around the country and spleen issues are relatively rare and not well understood. But I totally understand the long journey and high vet bills. Argghhhh…

[OverandOnward]

@gradytb

Recurrent and continuing to increase in severity colic.

So sorry about the final outcome. I’m at peace with your decision. The increasing severity was not a happy outlook for a horse, who doesn’t understand why he/she feels so painful and awful.

[starsandsun]

Interesting. So biopsies showed no eosinophils? There was no thickening in the intestines?

[RunAmuckDog]

Thank you for the update and best wishes for smoother sailing here on out.

[starsandsun]

How is she doing? Would love an update and hope all is well.

[OverandOnward]

@starsandsun

You had commented on a post from gradytb about their horse who was euthanized, but I do not see where RaconteurRaven’s mare passed

OK I misread it, you’re right. I’ll delete my post as it is rather useless. If you wish you can delete your reply, and then my mistake won’t distract from the thread.

[RaconteurRaven]

Hey, she’s home and…still confusing. I believe her ulcers are back, but I’m taking that one day at a time. The good news is, she seems to be farting more and she can’t displace. Still working on transitioning her back to 24/7 turnout.

[cnd8]

Disclaimer-I haven’t had time to read this whole post, BUT, I was at a point with 9 months of bi weekly colic on a horse I had and exploratory surgery was suggested to me after $4000 worth of diagnostics left us with basically nothing. I chose NOT to do the surgery. What ended up being the culprit…coastal hay. We tried a restricted forage diet because, quite honestly, we had tried all else there was to try, and he never colicked again. He went 3 months on soaked alfalfa pellets, and his grain, of course. Then we added chopped alfalfa, and eventually regular alfalfa. Now he can eat alfalfa, perennial peanut (grows here in the South and is comparable to alfalfa but much cheaper, timothy, or orchard hay with NO ISSUES).

The coastal hay we were keeping in front of him 24/7 was making him colic non-stop. It has been 4 years now with no issues. Never would I have thought that hay would be making him sick, but it sure was. At one point several months in to the hay transition, I tried to go back to coastal once because it is so economical. He was miserable. He was biting at us, ears back, looking at his sides. He told me. He confirmed what I was fearing all over again. Coastal would never be an option.

[cnd8]

Forgot to add that my guy was displacing as well.

[NancyM]

Mine is hay related too. Alfalfa is the problem with her. She’s 20 years old now, and I foaled her out 20 years ago. It took me a long time to figure it out.

[starsandsun]

Would love an update! Hope she (and you) are well.