Today in my Principles of Medicine class, the professor (who's an equine vet) mentioned that there was a horse with botulism down at the teaching hospital and invited students to come watch a neurological exam being done.
Botulism is caused by a bacteria, Clostridium botulinum, that creates a toxin that is released into an animal upon ingestion (and sometimes, though less frequently, through a wound). Most humans associate botulism with improper food canning technique and as an ingredient in Botox. Horses are particularly sensitive to the botulism toxin and exhibit neurological signs such as muscle weakness that leads to a stiff gait, difficult chewing/swallowing and sometimes muscle tremors. Since the severity of the clinical signs depends on how much toxin was ingested, some horses are worse than others. This poor guy was reaching the end stages where he was lying down most of the time and trying to get up every now and again.
It was a really timely case because the professor had lectured on neurological problems the last lecture and on toxemia today- both factors in botulism. I gladly skipped my boring clinical pathology lab to go watch the exam and hear what she had to say and I'm glad I did because I learned a lot and the experience really helped cement some of the concepts we had learned in lecture into my mind.
On our way out of the barn, a friend and I passed by the window into the large animal surgical suite. Lo and behold, they were removing a frontal sinus mass on a horse- awesome! So we stood and watched for at least an hour as they went in through the front of the skull (the "forehead" as we think of it") and dug out this mass, flushed the hole, put in a gauze drain and stapled the horse's face back together. I've seen a couple of field surgeries on horses- a sedative and pain killer are given but the horse remains standing and relatively "awake"- but never a fully anesthetized horse under surgery, so this was a great opportunity. There was a TON of blood but fortunately I'm not squeamish.
All in all, a pretty cool day on the equine front. Things like this help remind me why I'm in school slogging through the tedious material and I'm encouraged to seek out these opportunities in the future- even if it means missing a bit of clin path ;)
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