Background: Traditional sling-based systems to assist horses during recovery fromgeneral anaesthesia (GA) could be improved by adding a balancer to obtain a dynamicweight relief.Objectives: To evaluate the applicability of a novel balancer-assisted sling system duringrecovery of horses after GA and to report initial experiences with high-risk clinical cases.Study Design: Pilot clinical trial and a case series.Methods: The system and its clinical applicability were evaluated in a pilot studyinvolving two healthy horses and subsequently applied in 17 recoveries of 16 high-riskclinical cases. Recovery quality was scored on a scale from 0 to 5 (0 = poor, 5 = perfect).System tolerability was subjectively assessed as good, moderate or poor, and the balancersystem's effect on the overall success of recovery was categorised as positive, neutral ornegative.Results: In the pilot study, two test runs were sufficient to optimise integration into theexisting infrastructure and to provide confidence for clinical applicability. In clinical high-risk cases, recovery quality scores varied (score 5, n = 0; score 4, n = 4; score 3, n = 6; score1, n = 1 and score 0, n = 6). One horse with a recovery score of 0 was euthanised due toimplant failure sustained during recovery. Tolerability was good in seven cases, moderatein nine cases and poor in one case. The effect of the balancer for successful recovery wasjudged positive in five cases, neutral in nine cases and negative in three cases.Main Limitations: Low case number, subjective assessments, lack of a control group.Conclusions: The sling-balancer system can be used in clinical practice to assisthorses during anaesthetic recovery in selected cases. While some horses appeared tobenefit from the assistance, others showed limited activity while supported (moderatetolerability), reducing their effectiveness or necessitating sling removal. Further clinicalexperience and improved criteria for patient selection are warranted. K E Y W O R D Shorse, assisted recovery, balancer, general anaesthesia, sling
Kuhlmann et al. (Tue,) studied this question.