Colic Prevention to Avoid Colic Surgery: A Surgeon's Perspective.
Authors: Blikslager Anthony T
Journal: Journal of equine veterinary science
Summary
# Editorial Summary: Colic Prevention to Avoid Colic Surgery Surgical intervention for colic represents a significant welfare and economic burden, yet many cases are preventable through informed management—the driving premise behind Blikslager's comprehensive review of colic aetiology from a surgeon's perspective. The author synthesises evidence linking specific management and nutritional practices to alterations in gastrointestinal physiology, demonstrating that stall confinement and meal feeding patterns directly impact colonic water transport, motility, and microbial populations, thereby creating environments conducive to impaction and volvulus. Large colon impaction and large colon volvulus emerge as particularly concerning outcomes of disrupted water dynamics, whilst ileal impaction, strangulating lipomas, and other colic types each carry distinct risk profiles tied to nutrition, metabolic function, and—in the case of lipomas—endocrine dysregulation in geldings and ponies. Parasitic infection, whilst substantially mitigated by modern anthelmintics, continues to warrant vigilance given emerging anthelmintic resistance and shifting large strongyle epidemiology requiring surveillance-based rather than calendar-based treatment protocols. For farriers, nutritionists, coaches, and veterinarians alike, this synthesis underscores that systematic attention to movement allowance, meal composition and frequency, parasite monitoring strategies, and metabolic health represents a more effective—and considerably less traumatic—approach than managing surgical colic cases after the fact.
Read the full abstract on PubMed
Practical Takeaways
- •Modify stall management and feeding practices—avoid meal feeding and prolonged confinement to reduce alterations in colonic water movement and microbiome disruption
- •Implement surveillance-based parasite control rather than relying solely on anthelmintic efficacy, as large strongyle resistance patterns are changing
- •Tailor management recommendations based on colic type; different conditions (impaction vs. volvulus vs. lipoma) require different nutritional and management strategies
Key Findings
- •Stall confinement and meal feeding alter gastrointestinal mucosal transport, motility, and microbiome, creating conditions that induce colic
- •Meal feeding creates large changes in water movement in and out of the colon and alters the microbiome, increasing risk of large colon impaction or volvulus
- •Multiple management and nutritional factors place horses at risk for specific colic conditions such as ileal impaction
- •With effective anthelmintics, parasite-induced colic has been markedly reduced, but large strongyle resurgence requires surveillance-based parasite management