Checking Your Horse's Internal Health
At Equine Surgery & Medicine, our veterinarians are committed to providing the most innovative medical care and diagnostic services to your beloved horse.
One of the ways we ensure this is through our state-of-the-art in-house veterinary diagnostic lab. We offer the most advanced diagnostic tests to help our veterinarians gain valuable insight into your horse's overall health.
We will do everything we can to ensure a precise diagnosis for your horse's medical condition. With advanced blood tests, cytology, urinalysis and fecal egg counts, we can pinpoint your horse's issue and provide rapid treatment.
With the valuable information gained from these tests, not only can we protect your horse from becoming sicker, once we determine the illness, we can make sure the rest of your herd is protected as well.
Lab Tests Offered at Equine Surgery & Medicine
Our in-house veterinary diagnostic lab helps our vets conduct advanced testing and diagnose your horse's medical issues.
Urinalysis
Urinalysis is a diagnostic test that provides your vet with essential insights into the physical and chemical properties of your horse's urine.
This is primarily used to assess the health of your animal's kidneys and urinary tract, but it can also help detect issues in other organs and is important for diagnosing metabolic diseases like diabetes. This is a valuable diagnostic test for both healthy and sick animals and should be included in any comprehensive evaluation of your horse.
Bloodwork
Our veterinarians can run several common and specialized blood tests, at our facility and on your farm, to determine the health of your horse and to diagnose illness.
Some of the most common veterinary blood tests that we perform during routine and emergency appointments are CBC (complete blood count), white blood count, hemoglobin and MCHC (mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration), hematocrit, platelets, eosinophils, and blood serum profiles.
Cytology
Cytology, which is the study of cells, involves the collection and examination of cells and fluid from organs, tissues, and body cavities. Cells are naturally shed from the surfaces of mucous membranes, organs, and skin lesions, and they can be collected for examination.
Veterinarians can collect fluid and cells from difficult-to-reach tissues like the respiratory tract, the guttural pouch, and the reproductive system.
Laboratory examination helps characterize the cell types and evaluate the fluid present to determine health or disease status.
Fecal Egg Count
A fecal exam is the microscopic examination of your horse's feces, which can be done at our in-house vet lab in Wichita.
This test measures the number of strongyle eggs your horse is passing in each gram of his manure. When you send a sample to your veterinarian or independent laboratory, you get back a number like 50 EPG (eggs per gram) or 500 EPG.
Parasites can make horses uncomfortable, and irritable, and lead to more serious conditions. Annual fecals protect your horses from problems like colic, weight loss, and diarrhea and protect the pasture from eggs being passed on.