Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

One of the most common reasons for orthopaedic pain in horses is osteochondrosis and osteo-chondrosis dissecans, which is a result of disturbance in the growth of the endochondral bone. A part of the treatment and diagnosis is arthroscopy, a type of surgery which is commonly performed at most large animal hospitals. In human studies arthroscopy has been classified as a painful surgery. However, today there is no standardised protocol for analgesia during this procedure, and it is the surgeon’s discretion if intra-articular analgesia is to be administered or not in connection with the surgery. There are different opinions considering this matter; some surgeons says that arthroscopy is not a painful procedure, and that intra-articular analgesia can cause damage to the cartilage, while other claims that a multimodal analgesia and pain control results in a faster and better recovery and healing of the tissue, as well as improving animal welfare.
The purpose with this study was to examine if pre-emptive analgesia, in the form of an intra-articular administration of mepivacaine, decreases the intra- and postoperative pain in horses undergoing arthroscopic surgery in the fetlock, hock, and stifle. A total of 15 horses were included in the study, three of them received treatment and 12 horses received an injection with saline (controls). Evaluation of pain was done using a composite pain scale which incorporates both physiological and behavioural aspects. There were no significant differences in anaesthesia, recovery, postoperative pain score or SAA between the groups. The reasons for this may be due to the small number of horses included in each group and variability within group due to other biological factors. Therefore, the results were inconclusive and further investigation is needed.