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victims cry
 Posted:
Fri Jun 23, 2006 3:36 pm |
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Barbaro's hospital cares for many others. good article
Now known for Barbaro, Pa. vet hospital has other patients, tasks
KATHY MATHESON
Associated Press
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. - The patient underwent surgery when he was two days old and now, nine days later, he was itching to get out - or so it seemed from the way he gnawed on a curtain.
Or maybe the colt was just trying to get a little attention at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center. It's not easy being new and nameless when you're down the hall from Barbaro, perhaps the most famous horse on the planet.
The New Bolton Center has been ground zero for animal lovers and horse racing enthusiasts since May 20, when the Kentucky Derby winner was brought in for lifesaving surgery after shattering his right hind leg in the Preakness.
But the 700-acre campus, which is part of Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, has a wider mission, not to mention patients besides Barbaro.
The George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals, where Barbaro is recuperating, is one of 70 buildings on the site. New Bolton also boasts a number of research facilities, including centers for animal reproduction and equine sports medicine, as well as laboratories for aquaculture and poultry diagnostics.
Widener offers routine as well as emergency care, treating about 6,000 patients every year.
Some are more cooperative than others. On one recent day, it took at least three veterinarians to coax a bull back into the barn after it had undergone a castration operation.
And then there was the curtain-chewing colt, a patient in Widener's neonatal intensive care unit. The horse's feistiness seemed to please veterinarian Jon Palmer, who had recently performed surgery to correct an intestinal problem.
Earlier that day, Palmer finished treating an alpaca with a newborn that did not know how to nurse. He also was monitoring one mare's high-risk pregnancy while keeping an eye on another who had just given birth.
Palmer sees about 180 animals a year in the neonatal ICU, including goats, pigs, sheep and cattle, with the occasional deer, camel, zebra and antelope. The average stay lasts a week to 10 days and costs between $8,000 and $10,000, he said.
The unit is busiest during foaling season, from February to late May. That's when volunteers are called on to watch over patients and make sure their IVs and monitors stay in place.
Many neonatal animal treatments and much of the medical equipment used - such as IVs, fetal monitors and ventilators - are similar to those in human hospitals. But the standard for success is different, Palmer said.
For animals, saving a life is not good enough. The patient not only has to live, but be able to be active as well - "a horse that can be a horse," he said.
The facility, about 40 miles west of Philadelphia, has hosted animals from as far as Canada and Florida. "There are not very many places (that) do what we do," Palmer said.
Down the road from the intensive care unit, tucked between a couple of pastures, is the building for aquaculture.
Inside, vats of fish are studied by researchers like Lester Khoo. One vat currently had a hybrid type of bass being raised for a study on fish nutrition. In another room, small tanks contained catfish being used to research algae toxins.
Khoo, a professor of aquatic animal medicine and pathology, serves as a consultant for state trout farms. He also has consulted the owners of sick pet fish, such as koi and Siamese fighting fish.
"There's a human-animal connection," said Khoo. "People are very attached."
On the other side of New Bolton, Jaclyn Casavant was methodically cracking eggs with a spoon and extracting their contents with a syringe to test for bird flu.
Poultry farmers have been regularly sending egg and blood samples for testing at the avian medicine lab ever since the state had a severe bird flu outbreak in 1983-84, said Sherrill Davison, who heads the facility.
About 250,000 samples are tested each year. If any strain of the flu were to resurface - as it did in 2001 - researchers have a detailed database on all poultry flocks in the state to notify owners and prevent it from spreading, Davison said.
"With all these systems in place, we can very quickly respond to an outbreak," she said.
Meanwhile, Barbaro remains the star at the New Bolton Center. Large get-well cards still hang on the fence outside, and hundreds of people have signed posters inside the admissions building. This week, hospital officials described him as a "lively, bright, happy horse" and said doctors were pleased with his progress.
David Levine, one of the veterinarians who treated Barbaro, on Wednesday found himself examining a much less notable - but still much loved - horse named Lars Q.
The chestnut Hanoverian was brought in by owner Patti Care, 37, for an exam because of an inconsistency in his trot. Care drove about 55 miles from her home in Temple to have the vets look at Lars Q and give him an ultrasound.
"This is the place to be because they're the best," Care said. "I would travel much further to come here."
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/14878972.htm
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