Complications and risk factors during inhalation anaesthesia of horses

Complications and risk factors during inhalation anaesthesia of horses. In a retrospective study of 2339 horses which underwent surgery under general anaesthesia the complications encountered were analyzed. Perioperative complications resulted in the loss of 27 (1.15%) of these 2339 horses. This includes patients that died during induction of anaesthesia, maintenence of anaesthesia and following complications in the postoperative phase. The majority of losses (n = 25) was observed in colic patients compared to two horses that died after surgery for other reasons. Based on the patient classification according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) it was shown that increasing severity of the underlying illness leads to a significant increase in perioperative fatalities. The most common cause of a perioperative fatality was postanaesthetic myopathy, which occurred with a frequency of 0.64%. Furthermore it was shown that duration of general anaesthesia has a large influence on the development of fatal complications.