Got curious about torsion in horses while reading All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. The book takes place in the 1930s, but when I did a quick search it seems it is as deadly now.
ETA: By veterinary medicine I mean all treatments, including surgery, not just drugs.
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Recent veterinarian graduate here, so I (hopefully) was taught the most recent information on this kind of stuff. As other have already pointed out, the horse hasn’t changed it’s anatomy, and torsion isn’t something that can be medically managed or prevented with pills. Torsion is the physical twisting of guts, something that has to be surgically corrected. And horses anatomy is so stupid; the word “colic” is thrown around a lot because it literally is just what you call abdominal pain. Do you know how many things cause abdominal pain in a horse?? And their only outward symptoms is colic?? So you could have a physical problem like torsion, or dietary indiscretion, or endocrine problems, or a foreign body or kidney/liver/non-GI issues, and they ALL present as “colic”. So torsion is still deadly because it takes time to figure out exactly what is causing this pain in the horse, and depending on the problem, different treatments are required. However I’m sure the survival rate for corrective surgery for torsion is better than it used to be!
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