Medicine Department

The Medicine Department offers internal medicine diagnostics, therapeutics, and intensive care management for all ages of horses – from neonatal foals to adults. We offer 24-hour emergency and intensive care services. Our facilities include a medicine barn with 11 stalls, 2 intensive care stalls with climate control, and one sling stall. Our newest barn serves as the medicine annex and has an additional 12 stalls with isolation facilities. Additional stalls are shared with the rest of the hospital as needed.

Our diagnostics are assisted by a stationary 1000Ma X-ray machine capable of obtaining quality radiographs even of the cervical spine and thorax of adult horses. Video-endoscopy using 1 and 3 meter scopes provide high quality views of many internal parts including the stomach. Our ultrasound equipment is capable of examining tendons, lungs, abdominal organs, and hearts. The Doppler and ECG components allow for full echocardiographic evaluations.

We are especially proud of our neonatal intensive care services. In addition to our normal staff, extra “foal sitters” are employed during the foaling season to provide more attention to our intensive care cases. We have specialized neonatal beds, climate controlled stalls, IV pumps, and of course, 24-hour veterinary care. We provide hospital care for approximately 150 sick neonates per year.

Some our services provided include:

• Internal Medicine diagnostics and treatment
• Intensive care for foals and adults
• Cardiac evaluations using ultrasound, telemetry and stationary EKG
• Video endoscopy, gastroscopy
• High-risk pregnancy evaluation and foaling
• On-site laboratory with additional stall side lab capabilities

Ophthalmology is an additional service with Board Certified Ophthalmologist, Dr. Dennis Brooks, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, consulting on a weekly basis. Dr. Brooks usually sees patients at our hospital on Wednesday afternoons. Dr. Clark acts as liaison for scheduling ophthalmic cases.

If you are in need of any of these services, please see the section on referring cases. You do not need a veterinarian to refer a case but we do need to be notified prior to a case referral.

The Department is staffed with a Board Certified Veterinary Internist (Dr. Carol Clark), and augmented by the rest of the hospital veterinary surgeons, residents, interns, veterinary technicians, and pharmacy technician.