The fall thoroughbred sales have begun and there will be over 30 sales held worldwide from October to January. A lot of money and possible future winners will be changing hands.

The horse industry, like many others, is cluttered with products. Each company has its own spin on why their product is the best choice for your horse. Even as a veterinarian, I often find it difficult to determine the “right” product for my own horse.

We have previously discussed several uses for the Flexineb® nebulizer. What we haven’t discussed is how important it is to know WHY we want to nebulize medication in the first place.  Before the invention of the equine nebulizer, the medications available were administered systemically.

Nuclear scintigraphy is a helpful diagnostic modality generally used, in horses, to look at radioisotope uptake in bone. A radiopharmaceutical is injected into the horse and the radiation emitted by the animal is captured by external detectors (gamma camera) to create the image.

At this point in the management of airway diseases of the performance horse, I think we all know that without environmental changes, our medications will have little effect.

There are entire text books dedicated to the topic of the equine respiratory system. So, to start, we are going to try to discuss the main structures and briefly discuss the most common clinical manifestations of the respiratory system.