THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411110336
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUSIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
DR. CRAIG L. SWEENEY pulled on his surgical gloves and stepped into the brightly lit operating room to begin a recent Monday morning's exploratory surgery. Hopefully, it would relieve the patient's chronic abdominal pain.
The patient, an Arabian mare, lay on her back on the heavy-duty, padded table in Dominion Equine Clinic's modern surgical suite. The horse had been plagued with colic that did not respond to medicine.
``Digestive problems are the biggest fear for a horse owner,'' Sweeney said, as a machine constantly pumped oxygen through a tube into the horse's mouth.
On the other side of the operating table, Dr. Amy C. Polkes stood on a step stool and leaned over the horse's abdomen, draped with sterile blue cloths. The team of veterinarians expected to find an impaction or perhaps sand or a stone in the intestines, often the cause of a horse's colic.
Sweeney, a Durham, N.C., native who has practiced veterinary medicine 11 years, has removed as many as 14 stones from a horse and 12 from a pony.
``My biggest was the size of a football,'' said Sweeney, a graduate of N.C. State and Ohio State universities. ``They come in all shapes and sizes.''
Until recently, area horse owners often faced a dilemma: Load the thrashing animal onto a trailer and drive four hours or more for surgery, or have the horse put to sleep.
Now, there's another option.
The Dominion facility on Lake Cohoon Road, about a mile north of Holland Road near the western end of the U.S. 58 Bypass, offers help for horses without that long drive.
Dr. John Sangenario Jr., a veterinarian who has practiced 15 years including 10 in Hampton Roads, opened the clinic in August. His main goal, he said, was to help horses with colic, which can be very painful.
``You have a 1,000-pound horse thrashing around, and then you have to trailer that horse four hours to Raleigh or six hours to Virginia Tech,'' said Sangenario, a Sterling, Mass., native. ``That's one of the main reasons for having this here.''
Sangenario, a graduate of Western Kentucky and Ohio State universities, and his two associates spend much of their time like the other large-animal vets in Hampton Roads and western Tidewater, making ``farm calls'' on patients.
But the Dominion Equine trio has something the others don't: the ``horse hospital.''
The facility can handle all soft-tissue emergencies, external eye problems and severe medical conditions. It also provides medical and surgical services on a non-emergency basis. But the vets do not routinely treat long bone fractures, referring them instead to facilities better equipped to handle them.
Before the clinic opened, horses needing surgery had to be taken to veterinary schools at North Carolina State in Raleigh, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg or to the Marion DuPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg.
``So many times we've had to put horses in a trailer and take them down to Raleigh, not knowing even if they're going to make it,'' said Pamela Turner, owner of Shibui Ni Arabians in Suffolk.
A closer facility has been needed for a long time, she said. She has not had to take a horse to the new clinic yet, but Sangenario has been her vet for years.
``This is going to save a lot of horses' lives,'' said Susanne Mozley, a horse owner and the clinic's office manager. ``I lost two horses in the last five years because I couldn't get them to Leesburg or Raleigh in time.''
Mozley, who works part time, has a large horse barn in Chesapeake.
``I would still have a beautiful palomino mare if this clinic had been here then, '' said Mozley while watching the recent surgery through a window.
Operating on a horse is similar to performing surgery on a human, only the patient is much larger, said Sweeney, 37.
``The instruments are a little different, but everything else is the same,'' he said. ``They all get a sterile prep. We don't spare a lot of expense with preps. We do it right the first time because catching up is always expensive.''
While the doctors worked, Sharon L. ``Lynn'' Barbini monitored the horse's vital signs. Barbini, a certified veterinary technician from Virginia Beach, felt the horse's neck for a pulse and kept a close watch on the blood pressure machine beside her.
Polkes, a Long Island native and a graduate of Cornell and Purdue universities, continued probing inside the horse's abdomen.
``Everything is palpated, or visually observed,'' Sweeney said. ``Everything gets checked so we're sure we haven't missed anything.''
About 15 minutes into the surgery, Sweeney felt something abnormal.
``It's a tumor!'' he exclaimed, pulling up a mass the diameter of a hot dog and about 2 1/2 inches long. ``She's colicked and colicked and colicked. This is a real good reason for it.''
The doctors removed the tumor and carefully reconnected the small intestines, tying off each of the blood vessels to prevent internal bleeding, before continuing with the rest of the exploratory surgery.
``Horses don't like anything that's inflamed,'' Sweeney said. ``They're very intolerant of pain. They can kill themselves thrashing around.''
Two hours after starting the operation, the doctors were satisfied there was no further problem. They closed the horse's abdomen with surgical staples as Barbini began unplugging the machinery connected to the horse.
Emergencies can happen any time, Sweeney said, so the operating room would be scrubbed immediately.
``Thirty minutes after this mare is out of here,'' he said, ``we will be ready for another one.''
When Barbini said the horse was breathing again on her own, the medical team hooked straps called hobbles around her legs and lifted her with a hydraulic hoist from the operating table onto thick blue pads in the adjacent recovery room. Barbini would remain with her until she could return to her stall.
Dominion's 5,000-square-foot facility has six stalls, including an isolation stall and a climate-controlled, intensive-care stall. Staffed to provide 24-hour care, the clinic also includes a large, indoor treatment area with stocks and a state-of-the-art laboratory.
For routine calls, the vets travel to farms all over Hampton Roads. There is a large horse population in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk and in Southampton and Isle of Wight counties and northeastern North Carolina.
Sangenario, who lives in Virginia Beach, chose Suffolk for the clinic partly because its location is easier for many horse owners to reach than, say, one such as Pungo.
And the site will be easily accessible from New Kent County, where the proposed horse racing track is to be built. He had started planning the clinic before the race track was discussed, he said.
And zoning regulations and land prices in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake were prohibitive, Sangenario said, while Suffolk officials had been very helpful. Also, the owners of Liberty Arabians - long-time clients of his - had offered to sell him the seven acres at the edge of their property, Sangenario said.
He and Sweeney had first met when Sweeney was at N.C. State. Sangenario often referred surgery patients to him, and they kept in touch over the years. Sweeney, recently working in a surgical practice in Arizona, jumped at the chance to return to the East Coast to join the group.
Today, thanks to insurance, owning a horse is no longer a ``sport of kings,'' Sweeney said. For a $1,250 operation, for instance, the owner would pay only about $50, he said.
``I hate to tell a horse owner, `This is what we have to do and it's going to cost $1,000.' If they don't have it, we have to put the horse down. It's a very discouraging thing for me at three o'clock in the morning.''
``And usually,'' Sweeney said, ``there's a 14-year-old girl involved in this package somewhere.''
Unfortunately, not all surgical cases have happy endings. After the Arabian mare's exploratory operation revealed the tumor, a biopsy showed she had malignant cancer - extremely rare for horses - and she later had to be put to sleep because of complications from the disease.
More frequently, however, abdominal surgery eliminates a problem, Sweeney said. Since Dominion Equine Clinic opened, he has performed about 30 operations, about half of them for colic and the rest for some type of wound. All of them are doing well now except for one colic patient that came in with a ruptured aorta and had to be euthanized on the table, Sweeney said.
``Doing abdominal surgery is extremely satisfying to me. It's an opportunity to change an animal's life, to take a horse that otherwise was going to die and find the problem - and correct it.'' ILLUSTRATION: The color photograph on the cover of Dr. Craig L. Sweeney and
technician Barbini preparing an Arabian horse for surgery was taken
by staff photographer John H. Sheally II.
Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
In a padded room, below, the clinic staff helps ease down a horse
that has been given shots before surgery. Dr. Amy Polkes, above
foreground, prepares to operate while her patient is being prepped
by lab technician Lynn Barbini.
Certified technician Lynn Barbini keeps the Arabian horse stable
during surgery at the Dominion Equine Clinic in Suffolk. The clinic
is on Lake Cahoon Road.
Dr. John Sangenario Jr., clinic owner
by CNB