arthritis / cortizone injections

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GoneBust

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Hi
Just wondering any body elses experience with arthritis and cortizone injections. How long until you saw an improvement in your horse after the injections? My vet said i should start seeing an improvement straight away. Which my horse has improved, but every now and then he is grazing oddly again! He only had the injections 5 days ago. Am i expecting to much improvment to soon? Or do you think it is just something in his head that is telling him that putting his head down is going to hurt, even though it wont any more.
Starting to get worried, because if it doesn't improve the vets have indicated this could be the end. So really have everything crossed at the moment.
Thanks
 
I can;t help you with horses but my dog had cortisone injections and the difference was noticeable in 2 or 3 days after the first jab. I really don't know if it's different for dogs so this may not be much use, but my dog had weekly injections for 6 weeks and during that time he looked amazing but the vet was reluctant to give him any more due to the side effects (he was only a young dog at the time) and about 10 days after the last jab he was back to square one. Fingers crossed for you too
 
You need to work the horse strengthen the joint to get improvement your looking at two weeks before it set.

I have my horse done all the time and work him harder as the days go on after two weeks he is perfect.
 
My horse had a fractured bone in her hock. About one year later arthritis set in to the site of the fracture and she became very lame. She did have Cortizone injections but tey had no effect. She was rested for about a year and some of the bones fused together. 10 year later she is still being gently hacked out (mostly at a walk) and has a slightly incorrect action but it does not appear to worry or distress her.
 
My horse had 7 injections when he was 20 ish, he's 31 now, however I didn't think they worked personally, I then put him on liquid cortaflex, which after a week I saw an inprovement, nearly sound. He was on that for 2 months then I switched to powder, they also to the HA range now.

My horse is 31 now and still enjoyes hacks, beach rides, fun rides and the odd jump (if there's a photographer) the ground is ok and I'm not too scared :-) He has cortaflex daily.

Give the injections a go, it wouldn't hurt to give him cortaflex as well, but then you wouldn't know which was working, do the injections first, hope it works out
 
Mine had cortisone injections in both hocks for spavins in June last year. Vet put him on Metacam immediately afterwards as he said the injections can hurt, and to help get him moving freely again without feeling the stiffness. He had 3 days box rest and 3 days field rest, then built him back up to full work slowly. Vet's advise was at least 2 weeks of just hacking, starting off walk and building up to trot and a little bit of cantering in straight lines by the end. I did about a month of pure hacking though and I'd say 2 weeks in, I suddenly noticed that he felt so much more powerful and was generally more forward going overall. Didn't notice much straight away though.
 
dont know about horses, but I had my elbow injected and i was in loads of pain for about five days. When that wore off the pain from the tennis elbow (I think it was mucking out elbow) I was then pain free.
I believe the injection for horses is probably the same as for humans, mine was dexamethasone.
Just keep an eye as steroid injections can induce laminitis!
xxx
 
I used to have them in my back. They were a mixture of cortisone and local anasthetic, which meant I had virtually instant relief .... however, I was warned to take things easy for a few days afterwards as it would take a while for the cortisone to kick in properly (the first time I ignored that and was very, very sore). I found that on average it would be a week to ten days before I could feel an improvement which would last for a year or so before I would need a top up.

I would imagine that your horse might follow a similar scenario, in so far as he would need to just potter about for a few days to let everything settle down then slowly bring him back to work.
 
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