Foreign bodies in the digestive system in the diarrheic Hanwoo calves: A retrospective study

초록

Among several diseases of calves, diarrhea is the most prevalent disease and has been a major cause of economic loss to the cattle industry. The main etiologic agents of diarrhea in calves are bacteria, viruses, and protozoa, but non-infectious factors including foreign bodies obstruction in the diges-tive system also focused as the cause of calf diarrhea in the recent days. Because there is still limited information for foreign body-related diarrhea in calves, especially in Hanwoo, the present retrospec-tive study reviewed the medical records for diarrheic calves with foreign body in the digestive system (n=32). The morbidity was determined as 3.03% and more than half of them presented the acidosis, hyponatremia, and azotemia. The mortality in laparotomy-operated calves to remove foreign bodies or in non-operated ones was 28% or 85.7%, respectively, implied the importance of aggressive deci-sion for laparotomy when the foreign bodies were determined in the digestive system in diarrheic calves. During laparotomy, trichobezoars (hair balls) and hays were the main foreign bodies and prevalently placed in the abomasum. In the trials to predict prognosis by several clinical factors, the time for laparotomy over 2 days after first diagnosis, acidosis, and foreign body in the abomasum were highly associated with mortality. Therefore, we believe that prompt surgical procedure (laparot-omy) is necessary upon obstruction in the digestive system by foreign bodies is tentatively diagnosed in the diarrheic calf. In addition, when differential diagnosis list is made, foreign body-related diar-rhea is necessary to be included in case of diarrheic calf.

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