The equine lower limb can be a notoriously difficult part of the horse to treat with systemic antibiotics, mainly because the limited blood supply in this area makes it tough to deliver enough antibiotic to be effective. One option for getting a lot of antibiotic into lower limb and hoof tissues is regional limb perfusion (RLP), in which a veternarian places a tourniquet on the limb and injects antibiotic into a vein below the tourniquet. Isolating the blood supply via the tourniquet for a brief period (usually 30 minutes or so) keeps the antibiotic in the lower limb long enough for the antibiotic to migrate into the tissues of the limb.
So far so good; but might using one vein or another yield higher concentrations of antibiotic in the target tissues and, thus, better antibiotic activity?
Researchers from the University of Tennessee set out to answer that question and presented their results at the 2009 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention, held Dec. 5-9 in Las Vegas, Nev. Frank Andrews, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, director of the Equine Health Studies Program at Louisiana State University, presented the study for lead author Gal Kelmer, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, who was unable to attend the convention.
While veterinarians normally perform regional limb perfusion using injections into the palmar digital vein (just behind the fetlock in this study), the researchers explained in the study that using the cephalic and saphenous veins higher up in the limb (more proximal) provides several benefits
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