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July 13, 2006
Barbaro's Chances for Recovery Called 'Poor'
By JOE DRAPE and MARIA NEWMAN
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa, July 13 — Doctors treating Barbaro, the injured Kentucky Derby winner, said today that an acute infection in what had been the horse’s good hind leg has worsened, to the point that “his chances for recovery are poor.”

Barbaro underwent surgery on Wednesday on his left leg to try to treat the laminitis that had formed in the last few days, said Dr. Dean Richardson, the chief of surgery at the George D. Widener Hospital here. Because of the severity of the painful infection, which tends to form by excessive weight bearing on one limb, doctors performed a hoof wall resection that removed about 80 percent of Barbaro’s left rear hoof.

Today, the doctors sounded less optimistic about his recovery than they ever have since May 21, when Barbaro underwent surgery to repair the right hind leg he shattered in the opening yards of the Preakness Stakes.

“His prognosis for his life and his comfort has significantly diminished,” Richardson said at his daily news briefing, when he was asked about the horse’s chances of survival. “I’d be lying if I said anything other than poor.”

Doctors have said it is not uncommon for horses to develop laminitis in the six- to eight-week period after surgery, already a critical time in all recoveries.

“It’s as bad a laminitis as you can get,” Richardson said.

Barbaro is “comfortable” right now, he said, and any decision on how to proceed would be determined by how he is handling any pain he is enduring.

“We’re going to go on until everyone’s confident that we shouldn’t go on,” he said, adding that the final decision has always rested with the horse’s owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson.

“This is very bad for the Jacksons,” Richardson said. “They’re going to be second-guessed. If we quit now, some will think we quit too early. If we quit later, that we let it go on too late.”

He said that doctors are focusing on managing Barbaro’s pain for the moment. If the medications stop working, “we’re going to quit on the horse .”

“There is no vet out there who went into this to inflict pain on an animal,” he said.

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It has been a tough eight days for Barbaro, a horse who once seemed to have the Triple Crown in his sights, and is now simply trying to survive.

He has endured four leg-cast changes and a three-hour surgical procedure late Saturday in which a plate and screws from the initial surgery were replaced. The colt did not come out of that surgery as well as he did after the initial lifesaving operation in May, needing 12 hours to shake off the effects of anesthesia and return to his stall in the facility’s intensive-care unit.

Since then, concerns about infections in Barbaro’s repaired right hind leg and the previously healthy left one have added to feelings of unease.

Ever since Barbaro’s horrific breakdown in the Preakness transfixed the nation, and then his startlingly smooth recovery in the ensuing days lifted the spirits of everyone involved with the horse, the Jacksons have remained committed to the expensive goal of returning the colt to a normal, pain-free life, albeit one away from the racetrack.

They also have said they were prepared for the ups and downs that would accompany a convalescence that could take months. Now the downs have clearly replaced the ups.

Richardson, meanwhile, has maintained that Barbaro’s full recovery was an uphill proposition from the start and that the recent complications could not be easily dismissed.

Among his concerns is the infection in the right rear pastern joint, which is above the hoof and was shattered into more than 20 pieces when the initial injury occurred. While most of the fractured bones in the right leg have healed, the joint that connects the long and short pastern bones remains unstable.

“When you have that type of infection the bone becomes porous, like a sponge, and it’s difficult to get the hardware stable enough for the bone to fuse and heal,” said Dr. George Mundy, a veterinarian and general manager of Adena Springs Farm in Kentucky. “You need to get rid of the infection and stabilize the bone. Then you need time. You can almost say they’re back to ground zero.”

But everyone knew there was a possibility that the horse could also develop laminitis.

“It goes hand in hand,” said Dr. Larry Bramlage, an equine surgeon in Kentucky. “With the problems with the right pastern, it increases the load on the opposite leg,” the left one, where Barbaro now has an infection.

“’Laminitis is usually the terminal event for any horse that has had a severe orthopedic surgery,” Bramlage added.

While horses with laminitis can be saved, the prospect of Barbaro having to battle that condition, as well as other infections stemming from the original surgery, could mean extreme discomfort for the colt that would undermine the healing process.

“This is like a terrible catastrophic turn,” Richardson said today. “Two weeks ago I thought we were going to make it.”

Joe Drape reported from Kennett Square, Pa., for this article, and Maria Newman from New York.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company