Quote:
Originally Posted by Riot
No, not at all. In fact I think it's less likely, as they won't run as fast or hard, they'll produce a sub-maximal cardiopulmonary effort.
93% of race horses have evidence of red blood cells (bleeding into the airways) after maximal effort if you do broncho-aveolar lavage as a diagnostic method (squirt sterile water down there, suck it back out, and look at the cells under a microscope) This is where lasix is valuable to attenuate chronic, constant lung damage over a career.
Only less than half have visible bleeding in the airways via bronchoscope (merely looking down the airway) after a race.
And very few have such severe bleeding there is blood coming out their noses.
But believe me: if we stop using lasix, the first horse that pulls up a furlong from the wire, and is taken directly to the trainer in front of the grandstand snorting and losing copious amounts of blood out it's nose over the jockey, trainer, groom in front of the crowd - it won't be pretty what will happen in the press. But more importantly, that's not good for race horses. It's not good medicine. It's not good care. We want them to be elite athletes. Let's use current knowledge in veterinary medicine to help them achieve it. And that has nothing to do with "doping".
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Every vet and trainer I know say exactly the opposite. They will all tell you that if a horse who doesn't normally bleed, all of a sudden bleeds (a decent amount like a 3), there is almost certainly something going on. As Chuck said, it could be an infection. It could be an injury that has yet to be diagnosed. It could be a lot of things. It would be a huge mistake to just assume that the horse bled for no reason and that a bigger dose of lasix is the answer.
04-17-2012, 05:10 PM
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