2/10/2016

American Wild Horses Preservation Mail - Statement

Suzanne Roy <sroy@wildhorsepreservation.org>

Statement
Pamela Corey DVM <pchorsedoc@gmail.com>
To: Suzanne Roy <sroy@wildhorsepreservation.org>

Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 8:07 PM

I have been an equine ambulatory veterinarian since graduation from Cornell Veterinary school in 1998. This
length of time in practice, on the road rather than in an equine hospital facility, means that I have seen a range of
acceptable standard of care of horses during my career - from urban horses, including racehorses, to suburban
and more rural horses. They may be housed in backyards or large boarding stables but what they have in
common is a need for access to high quality surgical care whether it be an emergency or an in depth work up with
diagnostic equipment that can't be carried on the vet truck. And all of the horses I've cared for have been stabled
far distances (hours) from a university veterinary facility or private equine hospital.
Some horse owners have faced financial constraints making referral to an equine hospital out of reach for them.
In some cases, if the required surgery is minor, the procedure can be done in the field. Castrations are routinely
and literally done in the field - a horse is laid down on the grass under anesthesia or restrained with sedation for
this quick surgical procedure.
Entering the abdominal cavity of an animal in the field is a practice more routinely performed on cattle and they
handle it well. Caesarean section or correction of a twisted stomach are routine surgeries for bovine veterinarians
working on large herds. But when a horse requires colic surgery it is not an option to perform this in the owners
barn. Even done as a last resort, the risks are high enough to make recovery without pain or infection very difficult
and frankly, unlikely.
Culpotomy is the removal of an ovary through an incision via the vaginal area of a horse and in order to access
the organ, the abdominal cavity is entered. Numerous loops of intestinal tract have to be identified to ensure only
the ovary is accessed for surgical removal. The mare is restrained in stocks and local anesthetic and sedation is
used to enable the procedure to be performed.
The American College of Veterinary Surgeons (ACVS) states that standing laparoscopic access to the mare's
ovaries is the gold standard for this surgical procedure. This approach is more direct than via the vagina as it is
through the flank of the mare and a camera is used to ensure that the appropriate organ is identified before
removal. Pain management, sedation, anesthesia and post operative antibiotics for the horse are not optional in
this procedure. They are vital. Horses are extremely sensitive to pain and to peritonitis (infection of the abdomen)
and as a species are more likely to form adhesions after abdominal surgical procedures than cattle are.
A BLM proposal to "spay" (surgically remove ovaries) wild female horses by a method which is called inferior by
the ACVS is unconscionable and doomed to failure. The wild, untrained mares will not have adequate veterinary
medical care during and after the surgery and will be at risk of fatal complications due to the lack of laparoscopic
equipment, which is the gold standard for this procedure. This is an uncommon surgery not performed by any
significant percentage of equine practitioners in the United States because horse owners do not need to sterilize
their mares unless they have disease of the reproductive tract, such as an ovarian tumor.
In summary, the vaginal culpotomy procedure (without laparoscopic equipment) performed on wild female horses
in a field setting (as opposed to an equine hospital facility) does not meet the accepted standard of veterinary care
in this country.
Because these are unhandled wild horses, the administration of appropriate anesthesia and post operative care
will be difficult, if not impossible.
I strongly oppose the proposal to use this technique on wild horses.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=72b929caf0&view=pt&q=pchorsedoc%40gmail.com&qs=true&search=query&msg=15290125c8023bdb&siml=1529012

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2/10/2016

American Wild Horses Preservation Mail - Statement

Pamela Corey DVM

Member of AAEP and AVMA

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=72b929caf0&view=pt&q=pchorsedoc%40gmail.com&qs=true&search=query&msg=15290125c8023bdb&siml=1529012

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