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PROPER WAYS TO USE BANAMINE
“It is less risky to give this orally or by IV injection rather than as an IM injection,” says Randall. “There are times you need it when a horse is flopping around on the ground with colic. If you plan to have any flunixin products on hand, however (whether paste or injectable),
you need to be able to assess that horse and know whether you should actually give this drug. That means you need to be able to take a pulse, listen to gut sounds, and look at the gums to know if the horse is shocky,” he says.
“An owner called one night wanting me to come to the fairgrounds and give fluids to a horse. This was about 11 p.m. The show vet had looked at the horse earlier and said it needed fluids. The owner had given the horse an injection of Banamine about 7 p.m. and it wasn’t doing well. I asked about the history
on the horse. The owner said it wasn’t eating well that morning, so they gave it Banamine. This means the horse was sick all night by the time they discovered it
was off feed that morning, and probably sick the day before. They didn’t want to haul the horse to
a vet because they had to show some other horses the next day. They just kept giving it more Banamine, and a day or two
later, after the show, they hauled the horse home and it died. The owner just assumed they could keep giving it Banamine!” says Randall.
EQUINE HEALTH
BANAMINE ADMINISTRATION OPTIONS
“To avoid risk for this kind of infection, flunixin products
like Banamine should never be injected into the muscle,” says
Tia Nelson, DVM (Helena, Montana). “They can be given intravenously or orally. There is a Banamine paste, and I encourage people to use it if they want Banamine on hand in case their horse colics. In an emergency, the injectable form of Banamine can be given off-label orally (squirted into the mouth),” she says.
“Flunixin is readily absorbed from the GI tract and works about as fast as when given IM, but IV administration gives fastest response (which is usually what you want in a horse with colic). Flunixin is somewhat irritating to mucosal tissues; you shouldn’t give it very often orally or it may cause ulcers (partly because it’s irritating and partly due to the basic pH). But if you need to get Banamine on board and don’t know how to give it IV, you could squirt the injectable drug into the horse’s mouth – rather than risk an IM injection. It’s not labeled for oral administration; however, it’s labeled for IV only.”
The liquid form is absorbed readily through mucosal tissues
of the mouth and probably is effective even quicker than the oral paste. “IV injection, by someone who knows how to do it, is the best route, but don’t try it unless you know what you are doing because if any of this solution leaks out of the vein, you have another big problem. If horse owners need to keep some on hand, and have a prescription for it, and are giving it at home, they need to be confident in their ability at giving an IV injection. For most of my clients, the paste is safer and simpler to have on hand, without potential for this reaction.
If some of the drug slips out of the vein into the surrounding tissue, it burns and damages that tissue, creating serious swelling and blocking the vein. “This may wreck the vein (ending up with jugular vein thrombosis), but that’s not a life-threatening thing, compared to a clostridial infection that may kill your horse. Any time you can avoid a problem, it’s better than trying to fix it afterward,” Nelson says. The old saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is very true in this instance.
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