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May. 20th, 2006 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonBernardini was my second choice, but that's not a whole lot of comfort right now. :-(
updated to add: Barbaro broke his leg just above and just below the ankle; it's a serious break, but the real prognosis won't be known until the vets can determine how much damage he might have done to the blood supply in his leg. The breaks alone are serious but not life-threatening, but if the blood vessels were severely damaged, they'll have to put him down. I don't know whether his being all pumped up to race would stand in his favor or not. I'm guessing probably not.
edited once again to add: if he survives, Edgar Prado deserves a tremendous amount of credit for reacting so quickly and getting him slowed down and stopped.
This is one of those moments where I wonder if it really is a horse-loving thing to do, to love horse racing, but I remind myself that this is truly a freak occurance, and something the trainers and everybody who cares for these horses, especially at this level of racing, does their best to prevent.
updated to add: Barbaro broke his leg just above and just below the ankle; it's a serious break, but the real prognosis won't be known until the vets can determine how much damage he might have done to the blood supply in his leg. The breaks alone are serious but not life-threatening, but if the blood vessels were severely damaged, they'll have to put him down. I don't know whether his being all pumped up to race would stand in his favor or not. I'm guessing probably not.
edited once again to add: if he survives, Edgar Prado deserves a tremendous amount of credit for reacting so quickly and getting him slowed down and stopped.
This is one of those moments where I wonder if it really is a horse-loving thing to do, to love horse racing, but I remind myself that this is truly a freak occurance, and something the trainers and everybody who cares for these horses, especially at this level of racing, does their best to prevent.
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So far so good...but let's hope he doesn't do much more "jumping up and down"
Date: 2006-05-22 03:03 am (UTC)Barbaro Surgery Complete; Standing in Intensive Care Unit
Date Posted: 5/21/2006 8:57:21 PM
Last Updated: 5/21/2006 10:43:30 PM
...
While the surgery to repair the damaged area and fuse the ankle was considered a success, Richardson cautioned that because of numerous complications during recovery Barbaro still has a long road to go for survival. "To be brutally honest, there's still enough chance for things going bad he's still a coin toss probably," Richardson said, "even after everything went well (during surgery)."
Richardson, who led the surgical team, said the son of Dynaformer was in surgery for about seven hours. He said one reason the procedure took so long was the amount of time to prepare the colt for surgery and the recovery time to allow the anesthesia to wear off.
"It was a long recovery because he was under anesthesia for so long. The surgery was very difficult," said Richardson, noting that the surgery is only the first step toward Barbaro being able to survive his injuries. "The severity of the fracture was very severe. The long pastern bone was in 20-plus pieces. It was not a simple fracture. The skin did not break. When they injure their limbs this severely, what you'll see when you take the bandage off, it's badly damaged enough that you actually see serum and a little blood almost oozing through the skin in places it's so badly bruised. If he had white skin there, it would look all very, very discolored. He is very very badly bruised. We were able to put the appropriate implants in the leg."
Richardson also said a procedure to fuse the fetlock joint – the ankle – was successful.
"He got up from anesthesia without any injuries," Richardson said. "The most important thing to emphasize is that this is just the absolute first step in any kind of case like this. Getting the horse up is a big step, but it is not the last step by any means."
He said horses with injuries such as Barbaro's are "susceptible to other problems, including infection at the site because of the severity of injury and the amount of metal put in the leg to fix it and that horses are very vulnerable to laminitis or problems in the opposite foot. These are all major concerns we have. At this moment he is very comfortable in his leg. He practically jogged back to his stall. He pulled us back to his stall. Right now he is very happy. He is eating. Things right now are good, but I've been doing this too long to know that day one is the end of things."
Richardson said one of his major concerns, that the blood flow in the areas of the injury had been cut off, was quickly dismissed when the doctors determined "he had good pulses in his feet, good warm periphery. When we did the procedure he had good blood supply throughout."
Trainer Michael Matz, who was in the operating room to observe the surgery, praised Richardson and the entire staff at New Bolton for their work. "It's amazing to see him walk like that and the first thing he went in and started eating hay," Matz said. "They did a terrific job.
"I feel much more relieved after I saw him walk to the stall than when I was loading him into the ambulance to come up here," he added. "That's for darn sure. It was an unknown area that we were going in. I feel much more confident now. At least I feel he has a chance. Last night I didn't know what was going to go on."
continued in article...