Sick foals can rapidly develop hypovolemia, a potentially fatal condition resulting from low blood plasma volume. | Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse

Sick foals, especially those with diarrhea, can rapidly develop hypovolemia, a potentially fatal condition resulting from low blood plasma volume. Veterinarians must administer fluids to these foals; however, this can quickly overload foals’ immature kidneys, potentially causing the opposite problem: hypervolemia.

Veterinarians need to assess foals’ fluid volume quickly and noninvasively, but current techniques for doing so are limited, and clinical signs few, so a research team recently tested a method used in human patients with some success.

Melanie Tuplin, DVM, and her colleagues at the University of Calgary investigated whether they could use ultrasound to measure caudal vena cava (CVC) diameter in healthy foals, presenting their findings at the 2017 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention, held Nov. 17-21 in San Antonio,