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Gastrointestinal disease
Umbilical infection
Excessive exposure to environmental microbes or normal flora of dam
before ingestion of colostrum N.B. Dirty foaling environment
Clinical signs
1) Fever, hypothermia
2) Tachycardia
3) Tachypnoea
4) Dyspnoea
5) Poor pulse quality
6) Cold legs/hooves
7) Decreased urine output
8) Oedema
9) Oral small vessel injection
10) Coronitis
11) Nasal/facial erythema
12) Oral/aural petechiae
13) Uveitis
14) Hypotonia/coma/depression
15) Diarrhoea
16) Joint effusions
Diagnosis
Immediate definitive diagnosis remains problematic. Reliance on blood
culture is complicated by the time taken to receive results and the fact that not
all cases are bacteraemic. Immediate treatment of septic foals is critical to
outcome so treatment should not be delayed while waiting for results of blood
culture. Sepsis scoring therefore remains an integral part of diagnosis of the
septic foal. [3; 4] A recent study suggested using a cut- off score of 7 rather
than 11 for the modified sepsis score i.e. foals scoring 7 or above on the
modified sepsis scoring system detailed below should be treated as septic. [5]
This study identified 84.4% sensitivity and 41.8% specificity using a cut-off
value of 7. So if clinical judgement is consistent with sepsis and score <7 it is
still prudent to treat the foal as septic as this test is not 100% sensitive.
15-‐18
February
2016
East
London
Convention
Centre,
East
London,
South
Africa
187