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Thursday 6 September 2018

Understanding More About Pain Relief For Horses


By Ruth Cox


Just like people, animals experience pain too. In fact, pain is very debilitating among horses. In some cases, it may be the main source of euthanasia when the animal has a condition such as laminitis. Pains among horses are a huge problem. It can be a difficult and expensive affair, requiring frequent administration of painkillers to work. Many commonly applied pain relief for horses have their own side effects apart from the drawback mentioned above.

Analgesia also comes with some benefits. These benefits include shorter hospitalization, lower total patient bills, and maintenance of weight. The use of analgesics in the management of horse pains continues to grow as complexity of surgical treatment continues to grow. The topic of pain management is a large one and there is still a lot of research that needs to be conducted.

Managing pain in horses is handled using an approach referred to as balanced analgesia or multimodal analgesia. In this approach, a wide range of drugs are used to manage the problem. The wide variety of drugs used have different modes of operation. That means that they operate on different types of receptors. Multimodal analgesia makes small doses of each drug so as to minimize or eliminate any possible side effects.

Xylazine is an example of a multimodal combination of analgesia and it can be made to serve unique needs of a sick animal or patient. The intended course of administration also dictates the formulation of the drug. There presently exists a wide number of ways of administration of the drug and they include IM, SC, IV, and PO. Additional modes of administration include intra-articular, epidural, four point, transdermal and transmucosal.

Old analgesics used to be administered through common methods like PO, SC, IV, IM, ande pidural injections. However, latest analgesics have changed that and can now be administered transdermally by using topical or patch application. Many drugs may be administered through various methods. However, the method of administration that is chosen usually depends on how practical it is for the patient.

Some drugs applied most commonly in pain management in equines are NSAIDs. For a long duration, these drugs have been the best option for equines. When applied in high doses, adverse side effects are generated. When comparison is made between the older and the newer NSAIDs at a similar dosage level, fewer side effects are generated by the newer ones. Some NSAID can be administered at a particular part of the body where the analgesic is wanted.

All NSAIDs are basically same and therefore, availability and the cost are very vital aspects to look at when making a purchase. Various horses exhibit different responses to NSAIDs. This is the same to how people react to medication differently. Therefore, this means that the specific reaction of a horse to a specific NSAID should dictate the option of NSAID that one should choose.

NSAIDs have been found to be effective at reducing pain. However, their efficiency when it comes to severe painful conditions may not be significant. Even with that, NSAIDs are an important building block for multimodal analgesia. Chronic or severe conditions need very powerful multimodal analgesia in order to treat them successfully.




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