ENGLISH TEXTS
well as sports career - horses that were once condemned , for a wide range of different pathologies : fractures , colic , complicated foaling , respiratory problems ... According to Fabrice Rossignol , surgeon at the Grosbois clinic , which is located at the famous trotting training centre , everything has changed in recent decades , especially for the management of fractures : “ We have improved surgical techniques , team training , general anaesthesia methods , and assistance with recovery . Modern implants ( plates ) from 3D printing are also a major advance .“
Standing equine surgery , developed in France by Tamara de Beauregard , a veterinary surgeon at the Meslay-du- Maine clinic , is a major step forward because it avoids the complicated recovery phase , when the horse ’ s weight becomes its enemy and can ruin a successful operation . “ I started thanks to trainer Guillaume Macaire ,“ says the surgeon . “ I had operated on a Group horse which , unfortunately , fractured its leg on waking up . For the next operation , Guillaume said to me : ‘ Manage , you just have to operate on it standing up !’“ This is the technique in vogue for fractures that are not too complicated . “ It means having a good team with an anaesthetist who has to make sure that the horse is not too sleepy but doesn ’ t move either , and three other people in charge of taking X-rays during the operation .“ The Meslay-du-Maine clinic is the only one in France where electrical conversion is practiced , a surgery aimed at solving certain cardiac fibrillations that cause poor performance and pulmonary haemorrhage by placing electrodes in the horse ’ s heart and shocking it under general anaesthesia .
Thanks to advances in medical imaging , vets are “ less and less in the dark “, as Jean-Marc Betsch puts it . Interventional scanners , which are used in some clinics like Méheudin , allow vets to move around a stationary horse , so they don ’ t have to anaesthetise it and / or take images during surgery .
Veterinary medicine has not finished evolving , it is even doing so at the speed of light ! Jean-Marc Betsch is convinced that the importation of the PET scan , classically used for the detection of cancerous tumours in humans , will be the next major advance from the United States . “ Traditional imaging tools can show an anomaly , but we don ’ t necessarily know if it is the cause of lameness . The PET scan provides very precise physiological information about inflammation . We inject radioactive glucose into a horse and if the product is more active in one place , it reveals a ‘ hot ’ anomaly . In the United States , PET scans are performed on horses almost like ultrasounds .“
But the early detection of pathologies during consultations , which allows for preventive action , is perhaps the real revolution in contemporary veterinary medicine . Modern diagnostic tools combined with a science of clinical examination , which is culturally one of the strengths of French practitioners , allow for this essential prevention for the career management of the sport horse . “ Detecting problems at their very beginning , before they take a catastrophic turn , is the key to everything ,“ explains Sébastien Caure . “ This is of course done through imaging techniques , but also through raising awareness among clients : they now understand better that the earlier we act , the more chances we give the horse , whatever its problem .“ Regular monitoring can avoid having to repair a tendonitis or a fracture later on .
A mandatory prevention protocol was thus put in place in 2021 for the Melbourne Cup in Australia , a mythical race but one that has been heavily criticised due to fatal horse accidents : five between 2010 and 2020 . Investigations showed that most of these deaths could have been avoided if the horse ’ s fragility had been detected beforehand .
The limbs of horses pre-entered in the race are now scanned with a machine that allows them to be kept standing under sedation and not lying down under general anaesthesia . In 2023 , fifty-two horses were scanned and five were excluded from the competition . The Melbourne Cup has not had a fatal accident since this protocol was put in place , which saves the lives of champions but also potentially the race itself !
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SÉBASTIEN CAURE , THE KING OF CLINICAL EXAMINATION
Sébastien Caure likes to start by palpating his four-legged patients : his firm , expert hands feel their backs , limbs and hindquarters . His entire gloved arm explores their pelvises from the inside . Then , this graduate of the Nantes school , class of 1994 , observes the horses in action according to an unchanging ritual : flexion tests , trotting in a straight line , on the circle on hard and then deep ground ... before finally a sentence is passed : the horse has this , and that ... A hypothesis that the targeted use of imaging generally confirms . Sébastien Caure , an orthopaedic surgeon who is consulted in Normandy , at the CHVE in Livet ,
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