Getting Results…and Fast, Is Good for Business

Equine Rehab Centers perform a valuable service, offering specific expertise that bridges the gap between full fledged medical treatment and the modest capabilities of many stables. Their modalities vary, but all have the same objective - to return a horse back to optimum health.

Enter…Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

HBOT is making dramatic inroads into the equine sector, as breeders, owners and vets look for the competitive edge, and to save animals. The results are very positive, and ailments, injuries and diseases that were once life threatening or career ending, are being treated successfully.

HBOT has show impressive results treating:

• infections (internal & external)
• soft tissue injuries
• reproductive problems
• bowed tendons
• and improved antibiotic uptake, to name a few.

Equine Rehab Centers can offer a valuable service by treating their patients with HBOT. Equineox has both large and small animal chambers, for treating a whole range of animals.

Commonly Treated Conditions

HBOT is one of the most powerful tools available as an adjunctive form of therapy, and in some cases it works well as the primary therapy in horses. Colic and laminitis are the number one and two killers, respectively, of horses, and oxygen therapy (in conjunction with other therapies) can be very useful in treating both.

• Colic: HBOT helps restore blood flow to tissues after colic surgery. It also reduces obstructive swelling in the intestinal tissue and improves oxygenation of the resection (after abdominal surgery to correct colon torsion, small intestine strangulation, etc.) It’s been found that many colic cases respond much better to surgery when treated with HBOT before and after surgery.
• Laminitis & Navicular Syndrome: HBOT can arrest laminitis in the early stages. If you can treat the horse before the structures in the foot collapse (before there is crushing of the blood vessels), it is very effective.

Effects of oxygen therapy on problems like navicular syndrome and laminitis are now being studied. Researchers at the University of Tennessee are starting controlled studies on laminitis to get the data needed to document the effects of HBOT.

• Infections: HBOT increases blood flow to the infection site, which increases the amount of antibiotic delivery. The extra oxygen also increases the effectiveness of the antibiotic, magnifying the way it works against bacteria. High-dose oxygen tends to potentiate the effect of some antibiotics, such as sulfamethoxazole (SMZ). You are also getting 15 times the amount of oxygen to a tissue that was lacking oxygen due to infection of poor circulation. Oxygen also stimulates faster cell turnover and thus faster healing.
  
  Oxygen acts to kill bacteria. Most bacteria causing serious infection are anaerobic—working best in an environment without oxygen. At pressure, with oxygen at a higher level, it is also detrimental to aerobic bacteria. Extra oxygen also helps white blood cells function better to kill the organisms.
  
  Certain antibiotics such as gentocin and amikacin don’t work well in low-oxygen environments. Oxygen therapy enhances their function and gives a whole combination of benefits. HBOT is an adjunctive therapy; you still use antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs and other treatments. It’s a component process in which everything is working together.
• Abscesses: Internal abscesses (such as in the lungs or the abdomen) are sometimes not diagnosed early. By the time they are diagnosed, there is a thick-walled capsule of connective tissue around them that keeps antibiotics from reaching the site. This results in prolonged antibiotic treatment (often with no resolution of the abscess) at high cost to the owner, and potentially fatal consequences for the horse. HBOT helps the antibiotic get to the site and enhances its ability to fight the infection.
• Soft Tissue Injuries: Many injuries result in inflammation and swelling. Studies have shown that soft tissue injuries treated with HBOT recover in half the time. New blood vessels form more quickly, improving blood supply to injured areas, and there is swift reduction in edema (swelling). Since oxygen is normally carried by red blood cells, any tissues with a compromised blood supply suffer from poor healing. But with HBOT, oxygen is forced into all body fluids and delivered to areas with restricted circulation.
  
  Injured tendons and ligaments respond well to treatment; HBOT can be useful in dealing with bowed tendons, surgical repair of tendon or ligament injuries, etc. Surgical traumas (incisions) also heal faster with HBOT, as do large surface wounds and pressure sores. It decreases tissue swelling and helps salvage damaged tissues in traumatic injury. In chronic wounds, it assists growth of new skin and stimulates collagen production.
• Reproductive Problems: A prominent DVM wrote an article three years ago and described how he’d treated some older stallions for laminitis and noticed an increase in fertility. After reading that, Winstar (the first Thoroughbred farm in Kentucky to have an HBOT chamber) treated their stallion “Kris S.” in the chamber, and there was a very dramatic change. The stallion’s covers in the breeding shed had declined, but after HBOT treatments his libido increased (along with his sperm count), and the morphology (cell structure) of his semen was much improved.
• Dummy Foals and Other Neurological Problems: Used on dummy foals, it reduces edema. The oxygen in a pressure chamber has the ability to penetrate the cerebrospinal fluid. Head and spinal trauma often create neurological damage, thought to result from swelling of these tissues within a confined space, loss of blood and oxygen supply, and the sequential effects of these factors on nervous tissue. HBOT reduces the swelling and increases the blood supply.

Contact us for more information on how an Equineox Hyperbaric Oxygen chamber would benefit your business.