Shelbyville equine hospital one of world’s best

I have been in or around the small animal veterinary profession for 50 years — half a century. Every year I am amazed at the strides the profession has made in diagnostic, surgical and medical advances.

Many veterinary hospitals now have in-house blood analyzers capable of testing 40 to 50 different blood parameters, with results ready in 30 minutes. These same general practitioners do root canals and caesarean sections. They diagnose and treat such illnesses as diabetes or thyroid tumors while board certified surgeons perform total hip replacements in dogs. Scans and ultrasounds help us diagnose cases that once made us scratch our collective heads.

As impressive as those strides have been, I wanted to take a lateral step in the profession, over to the field of equine medicine and surgery, to see what advances have occurred there. I met with Dr. Timm Gudehus, senior veterinary surgeon at the recently opened Centaur Equine Specialty Hospital in Shelbyville.

Gudehus has worked 14 years as a veterinarian six years in specialized equine surgical training and six years as a board certified specialist in equine surgery, on three continents and back, in every discipline.

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He is originally from Germany, where he served as an equine surgery specialist since 2011. His love of horses and equestrian sports dates back to his early childhood, where he grew up in a family with a long history of horse riding and breeding. He came to the U.S. for an internship in equine orthopedics in California, followed by a residency in equine surgery in Louisiana.

“This additional training in the U.S. exposed me to all the equine disciplines that I hadn’t seen until that point, especially thoroughbreds, racing quarter horses and a little bit of western performance,” Gudehus said. “That was followed by a two-year stint as a staff surgeon in Auckland, New Zealand, which added the very last discipline that I hadn’t worked on, which was Standardbreds.”

Gudehus returned to Germany with his wife, an American citizen and small animal veterinarian, to become the leading surgeon of one of the largest and fastest growing hospitals in Europe, working on Olympic-level warmblood horses. That was his last step before coming to the Centaur Equine Specialty Hospital.

Dedicated April 25, 2017, the hospital is the result of a collaboration between Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the governments of the City of Shelbyville and Shelby County, and Centaur Gaming, which at the time owned Indiana Grand Racing & Casino in Shelbyville and Hoosier Park Racing & Casino in Anderson.

Purdue developed the hospital as a satellite facility and supplies the staff and technology. Shelbyville, Shelby County and Centaur Gaming committed major funds for the project, the latter contributing an amount sufficient to put its name on the facility.

Centaur Gaming benefited from such a fine surgical and medical facility so geographically close to Indiana Grand Racing and Casino, but readily accessible health care for track horses was not their only reason for support. Centaur Gaming’s admirable plan was to give back to the equine community by providing the same sophisticated services via referral from private practice veterinarians and to bring a new awareness of service available.

On average, the Centaur Equine Specialty Hospital caseload consists of 70 percent racing horses and 30 percent companion animal horses.

Any veterinary medical or surgical facility should be evaluated based on a number of criteria, such as the layout of the facility, the diagnostics offered, medical and surgical services offered, and of course the staffing — both veterinarians and support staff, including registered veterinary technicians.

The 17,000-square-foot facility currently sits on a 70-acre site, which allows space for potential expansion. The hospital has two treatment rooms, two day stalls, 11 hospital stalls, a 40-yard-indoor lameness assessment area, an outdoors round-pen for lameness evaluation, and continuing education room.

The diagnostic areas have designated rooms, with the lab providing critical in-house blood and urine tests as well as fertility testing, which is all-important in the horse breeding industry. Doppler ultrasound and digital radiographs are available as well as nuclear imaging for bone and soft tissue disease.

Dynamic endoscopy is offered and involves putting a horse on the track with a scope situated near the opening of the windpipe to capture a recording that then can be reviewed to evaluate the airway’s function. Any elite athlete must have maximum respiratory function, and horses are considered among the elite.

Every evaluation is detailed and thorough, as many of these horses are of great economic value. Since horses, like dogs and cats, can’t talk or point to where it hurts, a rigorous examination and testing regime is often the order of the day.

Too often when a facility or the diagnostic equipment it houses are mentioned, the term “state of the art” is used inappropriately, but not so at the Centaur Equine Specialty Hospital. The hospital’s biggest asset is the robotic 4-DDI Standing CT machine, one of only five in the entire world.

We can’t expect horses to just lay in a CT scan machine like we do, plus their rump and chest, each of which has the diameter of a small kitchen table, often need to be scanned. Thus a two-armed robotic scanner was developed to allow the horses to walk in between with just slight sedation for safer and more efficient processing.

The technologically advanced surgical area is where Gudehus and other veterinary surgeons perform elective surgeries such as orthopedic procedures, reproductive surgery, and removal of bladder and kidney stones.

Emergency cases, those that invariably happen on weekend nights, include colic surgery, the result of twisted, impacted intestines or emboli. Cesarean sections, complicated pregnancies, or wounds acquired from fence wire, farm machinery or dog attacks make up a portion of the rest.

In a very short time the local community, Indiana and surrounding states have benefited from this new facility. With plenty of room for expansion, a reputation for excellent equine medicine and surgery, and growing international exposure, we can expect the Centaur Equine Specialty Hospital to remain among the leading treatment centers serving the Sport of Kings.