Whate are the risks of equine general anaesthesia?
A horse may require a general anaesthetic for a routine planned procedure such as castration or for an emergency such as urgent colic surgery. When you are told that your horse needs surgery, there is a tendency to focus on the operation itself and forget the anaesthetic. It is easy to take anaesthesia for granted as an integral part of the procedure. However, for every horse, it is essential to consider the anaesthetic risks, when making the decision whether or not to proceed with surgery. A recent detailed survey on equine anaesthesia reviewed more than forty thousand anaesthetics. This investigated the perioperative deaths, i.e. those during and within seven days of general anaesthesia. This study revealed an overall death rate of 1.6%. If the sick colic cases were excluded, the death rate was still approximately 1%. One death in a hundred horses is frightening in comparison with the perioperative mortality rate in man, which is one in ten thousand. In companion animals (cats and do
