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Faculty member is NAVC speaker of the year in equine category

Dr. Chris Sanchez is shown with a mare and its foal in this file photo. (Photo by Diana Andersen-Davis)

The North American Veterinary Conference recently named Dr. Chris Sanchez, an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, as its Speaker of the Year in the equine category.

A board-certified equine medicine specialist in the college’s department of large animal clinical sciences, Sanchez received her D.V.M. degree from UF in 1995. She then completed an internship at Equine Medical Associates in Edmond, Oklahoma and a residency in large animal internal medicine at UF. She completed her Ph.D. at UF in 2003.

She worked with Dr. Al Merritt, now a large animal medicine professor emeritus, studying the effects of colonic inflammation on nociceptive transmission and central processing of pain. Her  research has primarily been focused on three main areas: the equine gastric ulcer syndrome, pain management in the horse, and critical care of equine neonates.

Her laboratory has evaluated the effectiveness of various drugs for the treatment of gastric ulcers in foals and adult horses and for pain management in foals and adult horses, as well as how different factors, such as age, housing, and illness can affect the physiologic environment of the stomach in foals and adult horses.

At the NAVC conference in January, Dr. Sanchez presented sessions on “Managing the Septic Foal in the Field,” “Prematurity and Neonatal Encephalopathy: Field Therapy and Prognosis” and several other topics. It was the third time Sanchez had presented scientific programs at the conference.