Intimidated with facing one of the most action-packed days of the conference, I did the unmentionable: I turned the text alert off on my phone before bed. Take that, Eastern Standard Time!

With a glorious uninterrupted three and a half hours of sleep under my belt, I loaded up my custom-made Tuesday Vegas Plan of Attack (VPOA) using the AAEP Convention app. I then called on my inner Ke$ha and promised classmate roomie, “When I leave for the day, I ain’t coming back.”

STOP #1: Medical Pain Management

Lori Bidwell, DVM, Dipl. ACVA, anesthesiologist for Lexington Equine Surgery and Sports Medicine in Kentucky, and Debra Sellon, DVM, PhD, director of Washington State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, teamed up and provided an informal, audience-led discussion on medical pain management. The most popular painful conditions included laminitis, foal pain (e.g., septic joints), colic, and castrations.

The group discussed and debated various techniques and described myriad multimodal approaches to pain management. Although some of the hot new techniques garnered much interest, such as using an intravenous continuous rate infusion of lidocaine, the docs in the room ultimately voted good ol’ tried and true NSAIDs (that is, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) as “Best Drugs for Pain Management in 2015.” They also explored theoretical situations, including whether topical ketamine could benefit laminitic horses with hoof wall resections as it does in offering human burn patients pain relief