Pain-free gallop: Mastering local and systemic analgesia in horses (LVS25)

20 Nov 2025
RVC Equine Theatre 2

Do you want to know more about multimodal analgesia, how to best optimise systemic analgesia for procedures including the use of local anaesthetic techniques in horses? Join us for a case-based presentation by 2 veterinary anaesthetists discussing different approaches to procedural pain management in horses. We’ll touch on acute pain physiology, objective pain assessment and different approaches to systemic and locoregional analgesia in horses to take forward into your practice. As is often the case in anaesthesia and analgesia there are multiple ways to safely manage the same patient so come along whilst we discuss the pros, cons, practicalities and considerations relevant to equine analgesia demonstrated with real life case scenarios covering standing and anaesthetised patients.

Johanna Kaartinen - Lecturer in Veterinary Anaesthesia, Dip. European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia & Analgesia

Jake Leech - Third year resident in Veterinary Anaesthesia & Analgesia

The Equine Referral Hospital, The Royal Veterinary College, London

• Describe the rationale behind multimodal analgesia with reference to the pain pathway and pain physiology.
• Outline a systematic approach to systemic surgical analgesia in horses.
• Understand why and how to add selected loco-regional anaesthesia techniques in the acute analgesic management of surgical cases in horses.
• Understand how to approach rescue analgesia in the horse with refractory pain.

Speakers

Johanna Kaartinen, DVM, MSc, PhD, FHEA, DiplECVAA, MRCVS, Lecturer in Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia - Royal Veterinary College

Joe Simon, Resident in Anaesthesia and Analgesia - Royal Veterinary College

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