Surgical Analgesia, Physiological Responses and Cortisol Levelin Goats Subjected to Exploratory Laparotomy under Distal Paravertebral Nerve Block, Conventional Needle Acupuncture and Aquapuncture-Juniper Publishers
JUNIPER PUBLISHERS - OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL OF DAIRY & VETERINARY SCIENCES Abstract The study was conducted to explore an alternative method of producing analgesia for surgical procedure in goats. Eighteen apparently healthy 1-3 years old female Philippine native goats, weighing 10-20 kg were divided randomly into three groups with six animals each and subjected to the following: a. Distal paravertebral nerve block (DPNB) using lidocaine hydrochloride; b. Conventional needle acupuncture (CNA) through needling of Acupoints BA04, 31, 22, 26 and 47; and c. Aquapuncture using 2% chili pepper decoction (AQP) to stimulate the same acupoints as in CNA. Exploratory laparotomy was conducted and analgesia, physiological responses and cortisol levelin the animals were determined. Good to excellent surgical analgesia was produced in all six sheep of DPNB, five animals in AQP and one animal in CNA. Heart rate, respiratory rate and temperature were within normal levels in all groups, ...