The ideal recovery: Assisted or not
assisted, that's the question!

The recovery period is often the most dangerous time for the horse and the most stressful time for the anaesthetist. This fact has led to a plethora of interventions to attempt to produce reliable and repeatable ‘ideal’ recoveries for horse and the anaesthetist.

What is the ideal recovery? Can we, should we attempt to assess recovery quality? And if so, what measures should we use to help us form a judgement? Is it best to focus on ‘end point’ results, (i.e. did the horse go home?) or, should we assess recovery quality against events or factors that are more likely to result in injury/ distress to the animal? (e.g. number of wall impacts, falls, attempts to stand). Even trying to compare one recovery to another in the same clinic, in the same recovery box, with the same recovery system can be problematic. Trying to compare between different systems, in different clinics, is even more problematic.

Many people attempt to grade or score recoveries. Having a reliable scoring system that produces consistent scores between different observers and different types of protocols/ assisted techniques/ situations is vital to allow meaningful comparisons to be made. No such scoring system is currently available. Therefore, we are left comparing outcomes (morbidities and mortalities) as the only way to compare between different systems and studies. [...]