Standing Surgery - When and Why?

The improvements in anaesthetic regimes and recovery systems over the last 20 years have, ironically, been paralleled by an increase in the amount of surgical procedures tackled in the standing sedated horse.

The results of surgery for ‘kissing spines’ have consistently shown high levels of client satisfaction (Walmsley et al. 2002). The procedure has been described in the standing sedated horse with similar encouraging results (Perkins et al. 2005). More recently a ‘minimally invasive’ technique has been described, to resect the tissues between the spinous processes (Coomer et al. 2012).

The technique of arthroscopic surgery in the standing horse has been reported (Elce and Richardson 2002). The arthroscopic technique is routine. The most demanding part is managing the various cables. The solution is to have an assistant surgeon whose job is simply to support the cables and stop them trailing all over the ground. The results of standing arthroscopy are good, with 92% of horses returning to racing after a mean time of 200 days (Elce and Richardson 2002). [...]