Perioperative lung ultrasonography in healthy horses undergoing general anesthesia for elective surgery.
Authors: Ribonnet Caroline, Palmers Katrien, Saegerman Claude, Vanderperren Katrien, van Galen Gaby
Journal: Journal of veterinary internal medicine
Summary
# Perioperative Lung Ultrasonography in Healthy Horses Under General Anaesthesia General anaesthesia poses recognised risks to equine respiratory function, yet lung ultrasonography (LUS) remains underutilised in equine perioperative monitoring despite its non-invasive accessibility. Ribonnet and colleagues prospectively tracked LUS findings in 25 healthy horses before anaesthesia and at serial timepoints up to 24 hours post-recovery, systematically recording parenchymal changes across eight lung regions and correlating ultrasonographic patterns with clinical variables. Significant increases emerged in all measured parameters following anaesthesia: I-lines rose from 10.8 to 15.28 (±8.7–8.19), B-lines from 3.2 to 8.72 (±3.5–4.86), and coalescent B-lines from 0.04 to 1.12 (±0.2–1.45), with peak LUS scores occurring at 2 hours post-recovery. Critically, maximal LUS changes correlated with total operative time and were significantly more pronounced in horses experiencing cardiorespiratory instability during anaesthesia, suggesting that procedural duration and anaesthetic complications drive pulmonary alterations in otherwise healthy subjects. For practitioners, this establishes that LUS can detect anaesthesia-induced pulmonary changes and offers a quantifiable framework for risk stratification; whilst these findings don't characterise whether observed changes represent pathology or reversible atelectasis, the technique enables earlier identification of horses at risk for post-anaesthetic respiratory complications—particularly valuable in longer surgical cases or those with intraoperative haemodynamic challenges.
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Practical Takeaways
- •Lung ultrasound can detect anesthesia-induced changes in healthy horses; clinicians should baseline LUS before surgery and monitor post-operatively, particularly within the first 2-6 hours
- •Longer surgical procedures and horses with unstable cardiorespiratory parameters during anesthesia are at higher risk for ultrasonographic pulmonary changes—these cases warrant closer post-operative lung assessment
- •LUS provides a non-invasive tool to identify potential pulmonary complications after general anesthesia, though clinical correlation with actual lung injury requires further investigation
Key Findings
- •General anesthesia induced significant increases in I-lines (10.8 to 15.28), B-lines (3.2 to 8.72), and coalescent B-lines (0.04 to 1.12) in healthy horses
- •Maximal lung ultrasound score after anesthesia correlated with total procedure time (r=0.4-0.44, P<0.05)
- •Horses with abnormal cardiorespiratory values during anesthesia showed significantly higher maximal LUS scores (P=0.005)
- •LUS changes peaked at 2 hours post-anesthesia (score 4.92±8.40 vs pre-anesthesia 0.9±1.8, P=0.02)