[15:51, 05/06/2022] Ampie Viljoen: My observations during the Namibian work we did last week. It was my first exposure to lower opioid with medetomidine immobilisations in rhino. - Down time was longer than I’m used to - Animals were more aware of their surroundings but reacted less than I’m used too. - Once blind fold is on animals are easy to manipulate and walk out of difficult areas without any additional drugs. -they stay more stable on their feet for longer. - peripheral pulses were easier to palpate - it was easy to place an arterial catheter - palpebral reflexes were more outspoken than what I’m used to. I saw some spontaneous blinking and eyes were bulging less - SPO2 were consistently in the 80s. Exceptions were in the high 70s - not one animal had butorphanol administered. - once down, patients are less responsive to external stimuli. - only one patient had very mild muscle tremors, the others not at all. - recoveries were uneventful and quick without any significant initial lameness. I was really impressed with what I clinically could observe and I think we should do the studies mentioned above to investigate the systemic effects so that we can know and not guess. [17:05, 05/06/2022] Leith Meyer: With severe hypoxaemia like that an adequate dose of butorphanol may help and oxygen should be used thereafter, especially for long immobilisations. [17:18, 05/06/2022] Ben Muller: Worth chatting to Petronel/CFW [17:22, 05/06/2022] Albertus Coetzee: Yes, the groundwork for all this has been done. That being a collaborative process between CFW and UP. Looking forward to some interesting projects! [17:39, 05/06/2022] Alex Lewis: I don't think we should over cook the goose as clinicians. There is no doubt the combinations work and the animals look good during and after. After all, if Hendrik does a rhino without moving it around much for hrs and the animals are all still with us, the mix can't be bad. I use it and have been impressed. Well done Hendrik. [18:28, 05/06/2022] Hendrik Hansen: Ampie, thank you for the good summary. In my longer procedures, I give oxygen at 6 L per min and that increase the SPO2 percentages with 8 to 12 % that wasn't available in Namibia . A dose of 5 mg butorphanol also help considerably, but it causes earlier wake up and another challenge in longer procedures. [18:38, 05/06/2022] Leith Meyer: It’s about reducing risks and ensuring animal welfare. At this stage I think all the different drug combos in white rhino place animals at risk from hypoxia. If we have the tools to reduce that risk and enhance welfare, we should do that, which is not only good for the animal but our professionalism too. [18:39, 05/06/2022] Hendrik Hansen: I do agree Leith [18:41, 05/06/2022] Morne de la Rey: Evening all. We have done now 211 rhino procedures that lasted between 1hr and 4hrs 15min. Hendrik did all the anaesthesia’s and worked the doses out to walk the rhinos to a road, a trailer or a hanger. The rhinos maybe don't go "down", to call it down time, but can be approached 5-6 min with great ease and walked to where we need them, sometimes more than 1km. The one difficulty was to keep the immobilisation on the same plane with this long procedure. Going down quickly caused the plane of immobilisation to go up and down during the period that they were recumbent. Now, using the HH regime, this is extremely stable, very little top-up’s are needed and very stable pO2 is shown. We had every rhino in left lateral recumbency, and he measured pO2 and heart rate in the right eye. Hendrik made graphs and documented all drugs, pO2, HR for every procedure (more than 300 rhino, including semen collection and other shorter procedures) In the beginning he used the common opioid doses and the pO2 was also between 75 and 95, similar to what has been found with this protocol Not once was there a need to pump the legs or swop sides. Only 1 rhino (Tombi) limped off on left front leg on the 2 occasions we did her - one of her procedures was only 15 minutes. I am glad the group saw it working well. [18:54, 05/06/2022] Hendrik Hansen: Erik, we have had at least 120 rhinos down in one position for over 2 hours and not one showed any signs of muscle damage at all after the procedure. I can comment on that and the CK values in the procedure that David talked about, but not afterwards. Certainly no clinical signs of muscle damage were seen in any of the animals straight after or even later. Many were observed in a boma and others in veld conditions. [19:00, 05/06/2022] Hendrik Hansen: This was with medetomidine [19:07, 05/06/2022] Hendrik Hansen: Leith, what values do you get with traditional immobilisations. I will certainly check some of our patients 36 hours later. What value is considered too high? [19:19, 05/06/2022] HO Reuter: I agree that a research and scientific monitoring and evaluation approach for immobilisations of all wildlife is necessary and interesting and will contribute greatly to us all learning. In the meantime following gut feeling, clinical signs, observations and experiences all help to assess immobilisations. From the limited exposure to Hendrik’s combinations for white rhino, my gut feeling is very positive. Doing those ultra-long procedures in a controlled environment on so many rhino must be the ultimate potential to do data collection and anaesthesia research at an unprecedented level. [19:26, 05/06/2022] Leith Meyer: Nothing like this has been done yet in rhino. The challenge is to first determine normal resting values and then see how they change. Once we know how to measures cardiac troponins, then I think it will be good to get bloods samples from conscious rhinos at rest to determine normal values of a number of variables, before testing the effects of different drug combos on these. [19:54, 05/06/2022] Alex Lewis: Are there lots of rhino dying during immobilization or post immobilization? Is there really a problem here? [21:02, 05/06/2022] Leith Meyer: When death is a yardstick for success and welfare, then there are few problems. For that reason doing orthopaedic and other surgeries in animals without analgesics years ago was also not a problem. Fortunately we’ve moved on from those days, and we should do the same when it comes to wildlife capture and medicine. That said, rhino immobilization deaths do occur.
