Human Injuries Associated with the Transport of Horses by Road.

Animals (Basel). May 2023;13(10):.

Christopher B Riley¹, Barbara Padalino², Chris W Rogers³, Kirrilly R Thompson⁴

¹ Department of Clinical Studies, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada.; ² Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Agro-Alimentari, Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, Viale Fanin 50, 40126 Bologna, Italy.; ³ School of Veterinary Science, Massey University, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand.; ⁴ School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW 2300, Australia.

Abstract

There is an increased understanding of shared human-animal risk in terms of "one welfare", whereby when animals are at risk, so are people, so preventing injury to one species may also prevent injury to the other. Because transport-related injuries to horses are common, the authors considered this paradigm to study road equine transport-related injuries to humans in New Zealand. The aim was to determine their frequency and associated factors by distributing a survey to horse industry participants through industry organisations asking about their horse activities, road transport experiences, and any related self-injury. There were 112/1067 (10.5%) handlers injured while preparing (13/112), loading (39/112), traveling (6/112), or unloading (33/112). Of these, 40% had multiple injury types, and 33% had several body regions affected. Hand injuries were most common (46%), followed by the foot (25%), arm (17%), and head or face (15%). Median recovery time was 7 days. Injuries were associated with the responder's industry educational background, years of driving experience, and reporting a horse injured during road transport in the past two years. Wearing helmets and gloves, and adopting strategies designed to eliminate equine injuries associated with the road transport of horses to reduce the risk of injury to their handlers are recommended.

Keywords

equine; horse; human; injury; one welfare; risk; road; transport; transportation;

Article Tools:

Medline

Email to me

Archives Highlights:

The Most Common Environmental Risk Factors for Equine Asthma-A Narrative Review.
The symptoms of equine asthma are typical of respiratory inflammations, and they include coughing, nasal discharge, and breathing difficulty even at rest in horses with severe asthma. BALF and tracheal wash analyses are the most popular methods of diagnosing equine asthma. Inadequate housing conditions undoubtedly increase the risk of asthma.

Performing an Avian Physical Examination in Practice
As with mammalian physical examinations, it is important to develop a consistent order for the avian examination to thoroughly evaluate each body system. Some components of the physical examination differ between avian species. For example, cloacal palpation is performed in chickens, but not in parrots.

Development of a dog owner caregiving style scale (Lincoln Owner Caregiving Questionnaire, LOCQ) and its relationship with behaviour problems in dogs
Compared to owners of dogs without behaviour problems, owners with high scores for the Disorganised caregiving style predicted dogs with separation related problems or with more than one behaviour problem, owners with high Avoidant caregiving style scores predicted dogs with Fear, and owners with high scores for both Disorganised and Avoidant caregiving styles predicted dogs with Aggressivity problems.

Limb amputation for feline appendicular bone tumors results in excellent recovery outcomes and high owner satisfaction with a low incidence of complications.
Time to return to walking without support was < 3 days in 69.7% of cats and 3 to 7 days in 16.7%. Activity level changes were reported as no change in 75.8% of cats. There were no behavioral changes in 92.3% of cats. Quality of life following amputation was recorded as excellent in 82.4% of cats. Owner satisfaction was reported as very satisfied, moderately satisfied, or satisfied in 98.5% of cats.

Aseptic protocol breaches are common among veterinary students scrubbing, gowning, and gloving into surgery.
At least 1 aseptic protocol breach (APB) was noted in 46.3% of the 96 procedures observed. The most common mistakes noted were contact of the sterile towel onto nonsterile surfaces (17.7%), contact of the gown with nonsterile surfaces (17.7%), touching sterile objects with bare hands (12.5%), and improper scrubbing technique (17.4%).