I: A New Look at Equine Gastrointestinal Anatomy, Function, and Selected Intestinal Displacements

To truly understand the equine gastrointestinal tract, one has to accept the fact that very likely it was designed by a committee. Most equine practitioners who have dealt with horses with colic accept this fact without hesitation. As a result, the aspiring equine practitioner has to face several rather daunting tasks, namely 1) making sense of the anatomy of the horse’s gastrointestinal tract, 2) developing an appreciation for the dynamics of fluid movement into and out of the various portions of the gastrointestinal tract, and 3) developing a working understanding of the variety of intestinal displacements that can occur. In contradistinction to people who readily develop mental 3-dimensional images from written descriptions and 2-dimensional drawings in textbooks, many of us are visual learners who have trouble developing a good mental image of the horse’s intestinal tract. In an effort to overcome some of these difficulties and simplify the complexities of the equine gastrointestinal tract, during the past four years we created a series of 3-dimensional computer-generated images of the horse’s gastrointestinal tract under normal and abnormal situations. We have used these 3-dimensional images in an attempt to address a very real problem called cognitive overload, which occurs when a learner (e.g., a practitioner at a continuing education seminar or a veterinary student) is presented material in a manner that interferes with the message being delivered. Therefore, the brain has to do two things at once: interpret the media as well as grasp the concept. As an example, traditional methods of presenting equine gastrointestinal anatomy and disease processes require that a learner’s brain transform 2-dimensional diagrams into complex 3-dimensional structures. For many people, this makes it difficult to focus on the important anatomical structures and disease processes and they therefore have difficulty learning the material. To minimize cognitive overload, a technique called scaffolding is used. Scaffolding supports a learner to the extent that the learner is asked to concentrate only on the specific