Anyone event a horse who lost a jugular??

[cindylouwho]

My training mare apparently got her neck caught under a fence, which caused a basketball sized hematoma on her neck. The vet drained the hematoma. The trama killed the skin which sloth'ed off a week later. The vet returned 3 weeks later to debride the wound. If the injury was not bad enough the debridement was the meaning of gross! All said, it has been 7 weeks, it is healing nicely, but it appears we are missing a jugular on that side of her neck. I am hoping to compete her again, if all goes well.

Any thoughts?

[Hilary]

Where is the blood going if not through the jugular vein? That's a lot of blood that has to go back to the lungs.

If the horse truely has a recircuited blood vessel system I would be concerned about a high-stress career. Would the horse be able to physically handle it?

If she just has a horrible scar on her neck it will perhaps mean some stiffness and physical therapy.

The body can heal in amazing ways, but I've never heard of losing the entire jugular vein.

[mjrtango93]

The jugular is so large is there anyway it could tear and the horse not bleed out? I would be inclined to think it is hiding behind scar tissue and is in fact still there.

[denny]

Many years ago one of Nancy Bliss` horses, Rio Doge, had a guttural pouch infection, and lost use of that side`s jugular.

He later won some fairly big events, inc a prelim 3-day at Rolex.(Full format)

[cindylouwho]

Thank you Denny! I just wanted to hear one good story. It is my understanding that sometimes the jugular can be damaged (called thrombosis) from bute or other infections relating to injections. Sometimes they open back up and other times they don't.

My vet is guessing, but thinks the hematoma allowed the blood to clot, other wise she could have died. She still has a massive wound. The vet thought during the debridement, he should be seeing a jugular, but it was not there.

So far, she has great neck movement. Far better than my vet thought possible. She is an very active girl anyways and has been turned out the entire time.

I thought I would put a heart monitor on her when I started her back working. She runs in the field without a problem. But running in the field and eventing are very different.

[merrygoround]

Many OTTB have an occluded or scarred jugular vein, due to sloppy medicating, etc. etc. They come off the track and no one is aware of it, except the poor vet trying to draw blood for a Coggins. The better practitioners always manage.

[hldyrhrses]

not sure if this was his jugular.. but my old guy had a bad vein in his neck and they could never draw blood from that side. sounds like the same thing. He was fine, except the poor vet never remembered and always tried to draw blood there!!!

[EqTrainer]

You probably really need to ultrasound to see what you've got.

My now four year old thrombosed his after a coggins was pulled. He was apparently allergic to the vacutainer needle used; he became extremely itchy afterwards and rubbed his neck raw on a cedar tree. We think the oil from the tree exacerbated it as he ended up w/a big flat cellular swelling/infection across his neck. After antibiotics and hot packing, it all healed but he had a scar in the vein. At first it was totally blocked and he did develop more vascularity in the other veins around the area. His head would swell up when he ate grass! But eventually he regained patency (blood flow) in it and while it still has a lump, it works fine now. Still... we pull blood/sedate on the other side and when he had a hoof infection, the catheter went on the other side.

But the only way to check for patency was w/ultrasound. So you really may want to do that, to know what you've got. Good luck! FWIW, my vet said that even if he had not regained patency that he would have been fine to do anything at all.

[HrsJmpr81]

You'd be amazed at how resilient our animals are ;) Its certainly not a process you'd voluntarily want to put your horses through, but typically the surrounding vasculature takes up the slack where the jugular is lost and venous return is still continued in a slightly more round about way. But losing a jugular on one side is not a death sentence and many animals go on living normal, happy lives.

[vbunny]

I used to gallop a racehorse that had a collapsed vein on his left. It felt like a pencil was in there. He trained fine and went off to run fairly successfully. Apparently its quite common in Standardbred horses.

[wabadou]

Same here, I had a big TB mare that colicked and required IV fluids. The vet clinic stopped the IV fluids but the folks got busy and didn't remove the needle in the vein for several hours which is a big no-no. She ended up with a big infection where the IV needle went in her vein and a grapefruit sized abscess. In the end, her jugular was so scarred we could never get blood on that side but otherwise she was fine.

[Jessi P]

Over the course of my 22+ years at the racetrack we have had 2 horses who lost the function of the jugular vein on one side.

Dewey Devil had a bad reaction to a shot of bute and ended up losing the vein on that side after it abcessed and then drained.

Then Princess El had a reaction to a shot of ketofen and then weaved against her stall webbing aggravating it until it blew out and required emergency surgery where they ligated each end to stop the bleeding.

Both horses raced successfully for a couple years after healing from their incidents. The only thing we had to do was to remember which side was the "good" side to give IV shots on. Didnt affect their performance one iota - both won races for us afterwards.

[starkissed]

yes I know a horse where one side of the neck vein was messed up. I think someone gave him a shot and messed it up. The vet he should never get shots on that side of the neck again. But otherwise he is fine.

[andy825]

I read an account years ago (in Horseplay maybe, or Equus) about a mare that had both jugular veins collapse after she needed IV fluids. Over time, the other, smaller veins opened up to compensate and she was fine to compete.