Arthritis in neck

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Elouise96

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Hi, we recently had the physio out for out horse who had injured her neck (probably in the field) her neck had gone stiff and she couldn't eat off the floor easily.
Our physio suspect s she also has arthritis in her neck. (We are getting the vet out very soon to confirm)
She's an 18 year old dressage horse, but we mainly just play around at home at elementary/medium level.

Has anyone had experience in having a horse with arthritis in their horses neck?
Did you still ride/compete?
What is to be expected if we continue to ride her, and will she be able to stay at the level she was previously at?
 
MissEmilyy09 said:
Hi, we recently had the physio out for out horse who had injured her neck (probably in the field) her neck had gone stiff and she couldn't eat off the floor easily.
Our physio suspect s she also has arthritis in her neck. (We are getting the vet out very soon to confirm)
She's an 18 year old dressage horse, but we mainly just play around at home at elementary/medium level.

Has anyone had experience in having a horse with arthritis in their horses neck?
Did you still ride/compete?
What is to be expected if we continue to ride her, and will she be able to stay at the level she was previously at?
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Ideally you should get the vet out and get him to look at your mare as he may need to inject the neck with a steroid to prevent anymore arthritis. My horse had to be stabilised with finadyne in order to travel for xrays to the hospital. Unfortunately the calcification had built up to such a degree that his spinal column only had a gap of 17mm instead of 52mm which meant his nerves were impinged.

As in my horse calcification can cause the gap in the spinal column to become narrower and start impinging on the nerves causing ataxia (loss of cordination) in the hind limbs. It depends on the severity of the injury but this is something that you might want to bear in mind. The ataxia made it impossible for me to continue to ride my horse and eventually he was PTS.

You really need to get the vet to assess the horse otherwise the condition could become progressively worse. I am not a vet but this is what I have gleamed from my encouter with my horse.
 
applecart14 said:
Ideally you should get the vet out and get him to look at your mare as he may need to inject the neck with a steroid to prevent anymore arthritis. My horse had to be stabilised with finadyne in order to travel for xrays to the hospital. Unfortunately the calcification had built up to such a degree that his spinal column only had a gap of 17mm instead of 52mm which meant his nerves were impinged.

As in my horse calcification can cause the gap in the spinal column to become narrower and start impinging on the nerves causing ataxia (loss of cordination) in the hind limbs. It depends on the severity of the injury but this is something that you might want to bear in mind. The ataxia made it impossible for me to continue to ride my horse and eventually he was PTS.

You really need to get the vet to assess the horse otherwise the condition could become progressively worse. I am not a vet but this is what I have gleamed from my encouter with my horse.
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Thanks for your reply,

We are getting the vet out asap.
Other than this fall (we think) in the field, she showed no symptoms of arthritis, she was happy, flexible and enjoyed coming out to be ridden, she's also very rarely lame, so we are hoping it won't be too bad!
 
Maybe she's seen a lot of neck arthritis in dressage horses (it's sadly quite common). Best to get vet to diagnose (or not). If the horse is happy, I'd be inclined to leave things alone though.

At learnt you can tie the problem to an injury, which for me is a positive thing.
 
My old girl had arthritis all over, but particularly in her neck. For the last 4 or 5 years she couldn't reach around to scratch herself, so I had to do it all for her (which of course she thought was great) but she could reach her hind fetlock/cannons if I held up her back leg for her and drew it forward - no wonder I had a bad back! SHe also couldn't just put her head down after a period of rest, so if she was eating I held the bucket at my waist height and gradually lowered it for her, and in the field she would drop her head in a series of steps in order to graze. She was PTS at rising 30 because of the increasing burden of her arthritis.
 
We lost a 9 year old Westphalian mare a few years ago with DJD of the neck bone. We had only had her a couple of weeks when it became apparent she was struggling to get her head down to graze. After vet and physio treatment over the next few months, it was recommended she be taken to leahurst for a digital X-ray to be carried out. This showed clearly degeneration of the second and third vertebrae of the neck bone and sadly she had to be pts. Dr singer did say it was very rare though and that we had been incredibly unlucky as she had only ever seen 1 other case in her whole career. I'm not suggesting for one minute this is what's wrong with your horse OP, however, in order to know for sure, a digital X-ray is needed as the neck bone is very deeply covered by muscle and not properly seen on normal X-rays. Good luck I hope it's nothing serious.
 
chocolategirl said:
however, in order to know for sure, a digital X-ray is needed as the neck bone is very deeply covered by muscle and not properly seen on normal X-rays.
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Agree wholeheartedly (sorry to hear your story Chocolategirl). My horse was xrayed with portable xray machine that the vet brought out to the yard and I was told catergorically that he didn't have wobblers although the xrays were really inconclusive as it became apparent later when he was xrayed at Liverpool that a large standing xray machine was the only thing that could penetrate the neck muscles sufficiently to get a conclusive reading. This was in 2004. Things may have moved on since then, but I am not sure.

I do think that this would be the next logical step forwards but obviously you need to be guided by your vet. I'd be very reluctant to allow them to use a portable machine though, instead I would be asking for something to stablise the condition until the horse can be travelled to a large equine hospital with the facilities you need. We hired a horsebox company as I didn't want to travel a still severely ataxic horse 115 miles and a 2 hour plus journey on the motorway when he could barely stand.

OP do keep us updated. Good luck.
 
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My horse was diagnosed with arthritic changes in her neck (as well as stifle problems and KS), but her neck has been relatively easy to treat in comparison with other things. The changes meant the bones were impinging on the spinal cord, but luckily it was found before it's too bad. She was pretty much symptom free, in relation to the neck. She had the injections into the bones, these were placed via ultrasound. She had to have a follow-up physio appointment and then we have had to carry out a number of stretches twice a day. These have included the "hug stretch" where the horse reaches around you as you're standing by the shoulder, a stretch round to each side, a stretch to the floor on each side, a stretch to the floor between the legs and finally one out in front to stretch the neck out straight. She's having a follow-up physio appointment this Friday, but just in the 2 weeks I've been doing the carrot stretches I've noticed she's become more flexible, especially to the left, which she was struggling with.
 
My sensible cob managed to fracture and subluxated a vertebrae in his neck we think from a fall in the field. The only outward sign of the injury was a small lump and a bit of stiffness.
The vet was unconcerned at the time, and it was only four weeks later when the lump was still there that we decided to X-ray.

Horses can be incredibly stoic with big injuries, hoping you get to the bottom of the problem and it's nothing serious.
 
You do need IMO get the horse into a hospital for X-ray don't waste money on an X-ray at home .
I hope it's something you can easily manage .
 
sianny87 said:
Oh, mine also went to an equine hospital, so was x-rayed with a standing machine rather than a portable one.
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Just out of interest did they give the reasons for this? Is it still the case the portable machines are unable to penetrate the neck muscles as I was told by the consultant at Liverpool in 2004? I thought maybe they might have moved on with better portable xray equipment by now.
 
applecart14 said:
Just out of interest did they give the reasons for this? Is it still the case the portable machines are unable to penetrate the neck muscles as I was told by the consultant at Liverpool in 2004? I thought maybe they might have moved on with better portable xray equipment by now.
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They gave me the option of having the vet come out, or taking her to the equine hospital, but didn't mention anything about not being able to capture certain images, but perhaps this may have been the case if they decided they needed to x-ray the neck. It was our first consultation with this vet so it made sense to take her as they could do everything in one go etc.

I have a friend who is an equine vet so I'll ask her. Would be interesting to know!
 
sianny87 said:
They gave me the option of having the vet come out, or taking her to the equine hospital, but didn't mention anything about not being able to capture certain images, but perhaps this may have been the case if they decided they needed to x-ray the neck. It was our first consultation with this vet so it made sense to take her as they could do everything in one go etc.

I have a friend who is an equine vet so I'll ask her. Would be interesting to know!
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Yes it would. I try and tell people who have similiar problems to that with my previous horse about the portable xray machines but I may be giving them wrong info now, like I say it was 11 years ago and i am thinking maybe portable machines have moved on and are stronger but it would be great to know the answer. My poor boy was misdiagnosed on the evidence from the xrays on the portable m/c and I was told he had EHV as he tested positive to it on swab (as do 33% of the horse population). They went down the wrong avenue so to speak and because of the ataxia he displayed and the xray they put 2 & 2 together and came up with 5.
 
Yes though he was younger (7?) and was struggling to make the transition to canter- very talented dressage bred chap.

Went to a farmer for a bit to be a posh hunter, never actually hunted but spent a lot of time being a horse, head down, grazing and hacking on the buckle, 6 months to a year later he was back doing dressage but ensuring he wasn't asked to come too up and round too often.
 
Yes mine has this - he's 8.
They diagnosed using a portable x-ray machine - I could see the bones quite clearly although didn't understand what I was looking at - there was no mention that this wasn't sufficient.
He doesn't have any symptons that you can see with his neck though as he is very flexible - however, he stumbles behind and dips behind the saddle and his performance was going up and down.
He's been injected into the neck bone, C5 and/or C6 I think.
The prognosis was very good but sadly I don't think its worked - been 3 months now and there doesn't seem to be any improvement.
I am still able to ride him but have cut out the jumping. Vet is due for yet another visit next week so I will see what he thinks. Such a shame as he is such a lovely horse.
 
dixie said:
Yes mine has this - he's 8.
They diagnosed using a portable x-ray machine - I could see the bones quite clearly although didn't understand what I was looking at - there was no mention that this wasn't sufficient.
He doesn't have any symptons that you can see with his neck though as he is very flexible - however, he stumbles behind and dips behind the saddle and his performance was going up and down.
He's been injected into the neck bone, C5 and/or C6 I think.
The prognosis was very good but sadly I don't think its worked - been 3 months now and there doesn't seem to be any improvement.
I am still able to ride him but have cut out the jumping. Vet is due for yet another visit next week so I will see what he thinks. Such a shame as he is such a lovely horse.
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maybe surgery would be the solution. Its quite a straighforward operation but the recovery is quite long, and the operation is quite expensive. It involves an inplant being fitted between the vetebrae to stabilise them and filled with bone marrow harvested from the area the implant goes into to encourage fusion.

Here is a brilliant link to it. http://equinewobblers.com/surgery/surgery.html
I think wobblers surgery in more advanced in the states and I am not sure what they do in the UK
 
ester said:
But the surgery is for compression of the spinal cord, not arthritis of the cervical spine?
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I thought arthritis in its simplest form was caused by calcifcation lying on a joint. Calcium sticks to the outside of the joints which make them have rough edges and this causes the joint to become inflamed when it rubs on the smooth surface. But I stand to be corrected. That was my understanding of the situation.

Compression of the spinal cord is caused by calcifcation build up following an injury which the OP describes as possibly happening to her horse.

Arthritis takes time to develop but as far as I am aware starts of with the build up of calcium i.e. calcifcation. It can cause bone spurs to develop too.
 
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applecart14 said:
Just out of interest did they give the reasons for this? Is it still the case the portable machines are unable to penetrate the neck muscles as I was told by the consultant at Liverpool in 2004? I thought maybe they might have moved on with better portable xray equipment by now.
Click to expand...

I spoke to my friend who's an equine vet - she said that the portable machines are not as powerful as the machines you find in the equine hospitals, although with the advances in technology they are producing much more high quality images. In her experience she's more or less always been able to use the portable, but will sometimes refer to standing machine in order to see more detailed imaging in areas where there is a lot of tissue covering the bone.

Update on my mare - she had the injections in the last week of September and we had a physio appointment about 2 and a half weeks ago, since then we have been doing the stretches she gave us at least twice a day and on her return visit on Friday she was very impressed with the progress in such a short space of time. Do not underestimate the simple stretches :)
 
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