New methods of diagnosis of fetal well-being in horses

Abstract

At the time where equine medicine is becoming more and more modern and efficient, it’s important to develop method to diagnose fetal well-being in horse and prevent the loss of foal or mare during pregnancy which is a disaster for the owner and cost a lot of money. In this thesis we will deal with two new methods diagnosis of fetal well-being in equine, both methods are non-invasive and easy to applied in farm condition by a veterinarian and sound to be very promising tool in equine obstetric. The first part is dedicated to Alpha-fetoprotein concentration in mare’s serum, its dosage during pregnancy allowed to distinguished five categories of pregnancy in mare: twins, placentitis and other abnormal placental diseases, embryonic loss, failure of conception and normal pregnancy (used to make reference values). It’s just need blood sample so it’s very easy to applied in any farm. The second part deals with feto-maternal electrocardiogram which provide general information about feto-maternal heart parameters especially heart rate and heart rate variability which sound to be good values to estimate fetal stress. This method allowed to have access to both cardiac profiles at the same time (mare and foal) and also to record long (24h) and short (as short as 5 min) ECG which in certain cases are essential to evaluate fetal well-being (24h recording allowed to have a better cardiac profile and decreased the stressor factors on the mare).