Document type: scientific article published in Animals
Summary: In 24-hour video recordings of 20 horses hospitalized for equine orthopaedic surgery, continuous discomfort behaviour was clearly reduced or stopped completely when a caregiver approached or interacted with the horse and then resumed after the caregiver left. For all 20 patients, the degree of reduction was potentially important for clinical management decisions. Current equine composite clinical pain rating rubrics are based on the observation of discomfort behaviour in combination with physiological measures such as heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, and bowel motility. All of these measures are usually assessed simultaneously during a caregiver visit. This raises the question of whether the discomfort of equine patients is systematically underestimated to the point of compromising their well-being. Although this is of particular concern to veterinary services, this natural characteristic of horses to show little evidence of discomfort or disability in the presence of predators is also likely to delay the recognition of disease in horses in general.