Construction building IV Equitom Lummen

On Sept. 7, 2023, Equitom Lummen officially inaugurated its new expansion in the presence of Minister Jo Brouns.

The new facility provides space for 50 additional hospitalized horses and includes two separate rooms for post-operative care. There are also two additional operating rooms: one for standing operations, one sterile operating room for surgeries requiring general anesthesia and three additional recovery boxes.

The sterile operating room is made entirely of glass walls and is equipped with the optimal technology to interact with the outside world. This unique operating room is a world first in terms of innovation and has numerous advantages:

• Hygienic Design: The futuristic operating room is constructed entirely of glass walls. Glass is one of the most efficient surfaces to clean and disinfect because bacteria, viruses and fungi have a harder time adhering to it.
• Optimal Air Quality: The operating room is hermetically sealed and has a slight overpressure to ensure that clean air always flows from inside to outside, without letting in dust or other contaminants.
• Sterile Preparation: Horses are prepared for surgery outside the sterile room to minimize contamination. Horses are anesthetized and placed on a wheeled table. Hair shaving, skin cleaning and sterile preparation are performed in a separate preparation room. Only when the horse is ready for surgery, the patient is wheeled into the operating room.
• Interactive Technology: The operating room is fully digitized and interactive. The room is equipped with digital screens in the walls and on the ceiling so the surgeon can view all possible images and information during the procedure in real time. In addition, 4K cameras are provided that take overview and detail images of the intervention combined with a sound system. This connects the OR with the multimedia/conference room located on the second floor. In this conference room, other specialists/veterinarians can follow a specific intervention and ask live questions to the team in the OR. Thanks to multimedia facilities, the surgery and meeting can be streamed directly over the net and specialists from all over the world can attend the session.
• Remote Viewing: Owners can monitor their horse's operation remotely by logging into their computers at home or elsewhere in the world.

In addition, the expansion features a conference and multimedia room on the second floor for lectures, conferences and interactive sessions.

With this expansion, Equitom Lummen has a total hospitalization capacity of 150 horses.