The title says it all. I scrubbed in on the surgery for my equine case, and as much as I don't like equine surgery, I have to admit, the stuff is pretty cool.
The surgery room itself is big and white and clean feeling, with windows for people outside to look in. It's attached to the recovery box, which is a big black room, and once the horse is induced, they lift it up using a stretcher thingy with giant chains attached to the really high ceiling. The whole wall of the recovery box opens up into surgery, and there's an invisible boundary between the two since surgery is sterile, so a sterile team waits on the other side to take over from the non-sterile team in the recovery box. The horse gets hoisted up, floated around a corner, and set down on the giant surgery table.
The anaesthetic circuit is basically the same as any other circuit, but it's giant-sized. The tubes are as big around as your arm. The ventilator is this giant cylinder. The rebreathing bag is as big as a pillow.
As you might imagine, the fact that horses are so big works against them. If they're on their back, all their organs press against their diaphragm and make it hard to breathe. Their own weight squashes their nerves and muscles and can ruin them if you don't take proper precautions. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the headache that is equine anaesthesia and surgery.
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