An interesting case...

Khan is a 14 year old Connemara; his owner Shannon called us to examine him one evening. He was off colour, reluctant to eat and dribbling saliva from his mouth and nose. The commonest cause of these symptoms is a condition called “choke” in which a horse bolts its food and gets a lump of it stuck in its oesophogus (gullet). Khan was treated with sedatives and muscle relaxant.

The following day Khan was still under the weather and had developed difficulty breathing. A decision was made to perform an examination with an endoscope, to examine Khan’s throat area. This involves passing a flexible telescope up the nose to examine the affected area using fibre optic technology.

An examination of Khan’s throat revealed a lot of bruising and bleeding around the region and a small green object obstructing his larynx (voice box). A gag was applied to Khan’s mouth to allow an examination of his throat through the mouth and when Richard placed his hand into Khan’s throat he felt a long rigid object. He managed to remove this (with some difficulty and quite a bit of force!) and it turned out to be a piece of Hawthorn twig approx 6” long. Khan was endoscoped again and this time his throat was clear.

endoscopy the offending twig

In fact the field which Khan lived in had had its hedges trimmed the previous week, so we presumed he had eaten the twig by accident while grazing.

Khan made a rapid recovery and a week later a further endoscope examination revealed the throat to be healing well. Since then Khan has continued to do well and will hopefully not eat any more twigs!