Fe Ter Woort

Fe is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and the European College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. She works in private practice and is an Adjuct Professor of CityU University, Hong Kong. During her internal medicine residency at the University of Guelph, Canada, Fe combined her clinical training with a graduate degree. Her research focused on Inflammatory Airway Disease in actively racing horses and in 2012 she defended her thesis to receive a DVSc degree from the University of Guelph. She pursued her interest in equine sports medicine further: she completed a 2 year Equine Ultrasound and Cardiology Fellowship at New Bolton Center, USA. Fe currently works in Belgium, for Equine Sports Medicine Practice, helping high-level sport horses in different equestrian disciplines reach their peak performance and providing specialty equine cardiology, respiratory and ultrasound services across Europe. Her reseach focus are exercising arrythmias and upper and lower airway disease in sport horses.

Cardiac Screening and Monitoring During Training and Exercise in Horses

Advancements in wearable technology have revolutionized equine cardiac monitoring, enabling real-time assessment of heart function during training and competition. Exercise-induced arrhythmias are increasingly recognized as both performance-limiting and, in rare cases, potentially life-threatening. While resting electrocardiograms remain an important component of cardiac evaluation, they may fail to capture rhythm disturbances that occur exclusively during exercise.

Wearable ECG monitoring during exercise is used to support the detection, characterization, and management of arrhythmias in equine athletes. A screening approach involving the collection of large numbers of exercising ECGs from racing jurisdictions around the world has facilitated the identification of rare but clinically significant arrhythmias that may otherwise go undetected. This has enabled the detection and withdrawal from training or competition of horses diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, atrial tachycardia, and frequent ventricular premature complexes.

For horses with known or suspected cardiac disease, repeated ECG recordings have proven particularly valuable. Examples include individuals with aortic regurgitation or a history of atrial fibrillation, in whom intermittent but serious arrhythmias may arise during exercise. These cases illustrate how serial ECG data can support fitness-to-train and fitness-to-compete decisions and contribute to ongoing risk assessment.

In summary, repeated exercising ECG recordings offer high diagnostic value, particularly in light of evidence demonstrating variability in arrhythmia detection across sessions. This approach improves sensitivity for identifying episodic arrhythmias and supports more informed clinical decision-making in horses with underlying cardiac disease.