The use for ultrasound imaging in equine studies allows non-invasive examination in animals that are conscious, bypassing the need for sedation which could otherwise be problematic. A paper published last month, ‘Right dorsal colon ultrasonography in normal adult ponies and miniature horses’ in PLoS One 2017 Oct 24;12(10):e0186825 by Siwinska N et al looked at how abdominal ultrasonography was useful when trying to gain information on the equine colon – the published abstract will be the focus of the article this week.

The researchers assessed 23 animals (a mixture of ponies and miniature horses) with respect to the location, dimensions and movement of the right dorsal colon, whilst also having a further group used as controls (10 animals, all Thoroughbred). As previously stated, sedation was not required in any case. All results were subjected to statistical analysis.

Abdominal ultrasonography revealed that the 12th intercostal space was a suitable region to identify the colon, whilst the thickness of the colon wall returned measurements of 0.27 (+/- 0.03)cm and 0.37 (+/- 0.03)cm in the study group and control group respectively. Note that these figures correlate to the mean and standard deviation. When assessing movement via peristalsis, the results returned were 4.05 (+/-1.07) contractions per minute and 1.7 (+/-0.46) contractions per minute in the study and control group respectively. For a full breakdown of results and further discussion, please see the full paper.

Interestingly, differences were found in smaller breeds when compared to larger breeds with respect to thickness of the right dorsal colon wall/peristalsis and location. These results suggest therefore that caution should be exercised when attempting to directly compare horses from breeds differing in size – the researchers here suggest that reference values when carrying out ultrasonography should be adapted when small breeds are being assessed.

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