The risk of infection is present with all surgeries. Colic surgery, which often entails scooping fecal material out of opened bowel, can be especially risky. Veterinary surgeons are ultra-careful when they clean out the bowel and administer appropriate doses of antibiotics to reduce the risk of infection, but peritonitis still can develop. A raging infection can prove fatal. As the injured bowel heals, it can form scar tissue, particularly at an incision site.
Adhesions can obstruct blood flow and cause chronic colic and pain.
A second surgery might be needed to break down the scar tissue. In some cases, the surgeon will opt to bypass the adhesion entirely by rerouting the affected section of bowel. Veterinary surgeons can't predict with certainty which cases will develop ileus, but several measures exist for attempting to jump-start the bowel and to prevent additional complications. One is to keep the bowel empty by keeping the stomach empty using a stomach tube and by feeding the horse intravenously, so fecal material can't get backed up in the intestine. Incisional hernia Contamination at the incision site can impede the healing process and lead to the development of an incisional hernia, a painless bulge in the abdominal wall that's visible externally.