This summer Zeke developed a foul-smelling discharge from his right nostril. When Zeke’s oral exam was unremarkable, radiographs were taken of his skull and teeth. The radiographs showed a dramatic sinus infection associated with an infected tooth root. The treatment for this condition involved pulling the infected tooth to remove the source of infection, flushing his sinuses to remove much of the pus and infected debris, and several weeks of antibiotic treatment. It’s no small effort to remove a cheek tooth from a middle-aged horse, as you can see from the size of the extracted tooth! To flush Zeke’s sinuses, a hole was drilled through the bone of his forehead to create access to his frontal sinus. Thanks to the anatomy of horses’ heads, their sinuses flow into one another, and sterile saline flushed into Zeke’s frontal sinus worked its way out the common drainage site into his nose, carrying with it large amounts of pus. Several days worth of flushing removed a large amount of pus from his sinuses and made Zeke’s antibiotic therapy much more effective. Zeke was a model patient and is now happy to be back to work, and as an added bonus: he smells much better now!
