Horse racing industry and horse vets

I have to admit I have never had a good impression of the Victoria racing horse industry. The industry is no doubt lucrative, and there is a lot of money talk involved as well as liability issues.

In the past weeks, a racehorse unexpectedly died on the racing track. There was a lot of public concern in term of animal welfare and jockey's safety. The field pre-emptive diagnosis for the cause of death was heart attack, which left me puzzled because I had never heard horse vets mentioning the condition before. So it left me to think that the racing industry must be trying to avoid negative public response, since there has been a fair number of accidents on race tracks. Animal welfare and right groups have been grilling and putting the racing industry on a hot seat.


Having confirmed the cause of death with the pathologist who performed the necropsy, the diagnosis was severe acute pulmonary (lung) haemorrhage, which was EIPH (exercise induced pulmonary haemorrhage). This condition is well known in racing horses doing strenous exercises though the severity of the condition is variable. The degree of bleeding the horse suffered was so severe that its chest was filled with blood. Oh poor horse! If this was to be known, there is no doubt the industry would suffer.


Anyway, there was case in pathology weekly round, which was likely to involve a lawsuit. We were looking down a histology slide of a horse's vein and told that the horse received IV (intravenous ie. into a vein) jugular (neck) injection of phenylbutazone, commonly used NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug eg. paracetamol) amoung horse vets. And apparently the horse got sick then progressively deteriorated over a period of 6 weeks before it died despite appropriate treatments. At the request of the owner, a necropsy was performed and samples of several tissues were collected for histology. Histopathology - evidence of endothelial (cell lining the vessel) damage, necrosis (cell death),  adhered thrombi (blood clots) and recanalisation of the vessel. There was septic thromboembolism (spreading of blood clots) due right vegetative (growing) endocarditis (inflammation of the heart valve) and embolic suppurative pneumonia (pus-sy inflammation of the lungs). In a nutshell, the injection led to sick neck vein, heart valve and lungs. It appeared that the vet mistakenly and injected the drug into the mural (wall) component of the vessel.

Why do we bother describe all those tissue changes (what I put up above is summarised version, by the way). During the round, there was an empathic row of laughters among us when the finanical value of the horse was known. The horse was worth AUD$3millions, for god's sake! And the legitation is now therefore worth the same amount, for the defendant's sake ie. veterinarian's! I do hope that the vet has some sort of work insurance otherwise he/she is screwed.

What a pity! They don't continue to make the calendar.

In general, horse vets are somewhat intimidating. They are quite uptight and strict but perhaps this is due to the nature of industry they work in. Of course, this is with a few exceptions. There is a male resident horse vet who was the topic of conservation among the girls (about of 80% the course are female, by the way) for a while when we first had a prac class with him - smiley, green eyes, hunk (albeit he is shorter than me) and sarcastic sense of humour.  In many movies, people working with horses and the work environment are depicted as macho and masculine. This often leaves a train of lecherous thought in one's mind; how much one fancy about doing XXX and enjoy having YYY in a horse barn!