Banamine Injection Gone Bad

Was home for the weekend and was over to my father in laws place who showed me his stud horse that got a bad infection from a shot of Banamine. He had injected him into the muscle in the rump and it got infect bad enough that he had to have the stud at the vet hospital for a week on antibiotics.
The father in law said it was a large swollen lump and when the vet lanced it, puss shot out like a water gun across the room. The vet said that this isn't the first case they had seen like this and said that they never advise people to inject banamine intra-muscular but only orally or into a vein. I should have taken a picture of his left hip because the vets have three cuts about 4 inches long sliced open right now to drain the infection and allow air into the wound since the bacteria can't survive in an oxygen rich environment.

I had never heard of this happening before and just thought I would post something to hpefully avoid this type of situation for anyone else!

Have a great day!

Clostridial myositis can happen any time an injection is given intramuscularly. It is an infection deep in the muscle from bacteria in the Clostridium family, it can be carried into the muscle during an injection from contaminated skin.

This is just one of the reason's why I personally hate giving my own injections. I am an EMT and know how to do them, I have started I.V.'s on human's. When I do have to give shots IM I clean the site, dry it then give the injection, last time I did have to give shots it was to my QH gelding Terry who had a bad deep puncture wound to his shoulder...so was getting 4 shots a day for 5 days then it went down to two shots a day for 5 more days!!

Those can be some really nasty infections!
I have done some reading about banamine given IM and can’t remember where I got the info from (it was a while back) but some vets discovered that for whatever reason banamine seems to cause those reactions (not sure if it is the same as mentioned above) more than the other typical IM injections in horse.

Either that or the reaction in those infections when it was a banamine injection were typically worse and the cause was linked to something in the banamine itself. There is something about it inside the package insert too and some vets are using banamine orally more instead of IM.
I'll see if I saved the info somewhere and can dig it up.

I had a Vet give an antibiotic injection in my absence. The horse got a walled-off abscess that cultured Clostridium Perfringen. It required major surgical intervention and drainage.

I prefer to only use drugs that can be given IV or orally. I would rather give a drug SQ than in a deep muscle. If I have to use a drug or vaccination that must be given IM, I make sure that I give it in a place that will drain if the worst thing happens and it abscesses. I will use the side of the neck or the BACK of the buttocks below the point that sticks out the farthest. Those are the ONLY places I will give a deep IM shot!

I will never let anyone give a shot in any other place to one of my horses -- Vet or not. I never let anyone use the top of a horse's butt or the pectoral muscles in the front of the chest. I would rather give a shot just under the skin (SQ) than deep muscle. Penicillin is one of the few drugs I will give IM because it has to be given that way.

I use alcohol to clean the skin on any IM shot and I only use 99% alcohol and buy it by the gallon. It must work pretty well as I have never had a abscess but have healed up 5 or 6 caused by Vets-- including the bad one I had.

Our foal had the same thing happen to her. On the bright side, she now desensitized to trailers, new places, and vets sticking a scalpel in her neck to drain it. Except ours was an antitoxin shot.
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A trainer I knew had this happen to her horse and a huge chunck of his butt had to be cut out, it had died. It was hideous to look at.

WOW. This makes me so glad the knot on Rascals neck from a tetanus shot went down with gentle massage and lineament.

Can they get these infections from any vaccines?

Ok, found it in my seminar notes so I either took it during the annual seminar given by our vets, or checked the info through the vets for validity.

The gist of it was: What is the efficacy of giving the injectable form (not paste) of Banamine orally? Reason: to avoid the above mentioned infections associated with IM injections/Banamine injections.
The answer was that given orally, the injectable form is just as effective as giving it IM.
IV is still the preferred method for immediate/urgent need, however in light of wanting to avoid IM injections, orally was perfectly acceptable.

Was told it tasted nasty, however when I had to give it to one of the rescue donkeys she only pulled a mild face about it.

Yuck! I am with Cherie and others, I am very cautious about giving IM injections (or any injections, really, but more-so about IM). My preferred spot is on the neck. I never give shots in the rump just because I was hurt bad by a mule when he got a shot in the butt when I was a young child .

I am perfectly comfortable giving all my own shots IM and SubQ. Less comfortable with IV, but my Dad can hit a vein as deftly as any vet I've ever seen so I let him do that one.

I've heard of a lot of horses getting really nasty infections that had poor outcomes when they are given IM shots on the top of the rump. That's another reason I'll probably never do one there.