bonny changes in fetlock/steroid injections

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angelish

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hi all
my friends horse went lame behind about 3 weeks ago ,sudden swelling up fetlock and cannon bone and lame in trot ,no heat though

after faffing about with AB's (didn't make any difference),digging about in foot etc she went in today for full works and exrays
they found bonny changes in the fetlock joint and have given a steroid injection into the joint with the hope this will show improvement in the next few days ,great if that works will happily inject her when she needs it (vet said 6-12 monthly)
anyone success stories ^ ?

the problem :(
look on vets face (known her a long time)said slim chance of above working
other option is cutting the angular ligament as its stopping swelling coming out further restricting movement ?
i will look into that ^ but thought i'd ask here first for actual own horse stories

another worry is when they did flexion tests she was very lame ie not weight baring for a good 2 mins ,ive never seen one "fail" a flexion so badly :( she did trot away but sort of hopped on the toe ,couldn't put it down

i'm a glass half empty kind of person and tbh i'm very concerned :(

has anyone had any experience of anything above particularly the level of lameness involved or of course any other treatments worth having a think about
 
angelish said:
look on vets face (known her a long time)said slim chance of above working
other option is cutting the angular ligament as its stopping swelling coming out further restricting movement ?
i will look into that ^ but thought i'd ask here first for actual own horse stories
Click to expand...
I know what you want is stories but I thought I might be able to help you with some background info as I don't have experience in this condition myself.

Basically what I think the vet was saying was the fetlock annular ligament.

The ligament movement becomes restricted due to synovitis of the digital sheath of the fetlock. Synovitis is another name for inflammation.

Symptoms are lameness which is hard to fix, and a swelling around the joint (called synovial distension). This condition can be helped by cutting the annular ligament of the fetlock. In studies of 24 cases, after section of the annular ligament was carried out 16 horses returned to work with no re-ocurrence of lameness, three cases were lost (through other problems unrelated to this condition) and three went on to have another totally unrelated problem that caused the original lameness to remain unresolved.

If the injury involves DDFT injury (deep digital flexor tendon) injury that you can be on a real roller coaster ride as far as getting the problem fixed.

The photo here shows typical swelling associated with annular ligament (photo copyright of Llwyncwn a h&h forum user)
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=an...&tbnw=117&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0


Here is a picture showing where the annular ligament is.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...3IGT-DFGsrH8gO9i721AQ&ved=0CHUQ9QEwBw&dur=559


Here is a link to lots of posts people have previously put on the forum about annular ligaments.

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/search.php?searchid=5094394

Sorry I can't be of any more help xxx
 
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One of my endurance horses had these exact same problems last year.

She was intermittently lame on her right hind, nothing obviously wrong from the outside. She would be fine one day, and lame the next, the good days included winning a couple of 80km races in April and May but she was definately nto right.

At the same time she was repeatedly pulling the right hind shoe off whilst stabled overnight. The vet decided that she must have a sub solar haematoma (big sole bruise) from the trauma yet the farrier was unconvinced as there was little response to hoof testers.

Finally, after going lame at a ride after 50km we took her in to the clinic as the vet wanted an xray of the foot to establish what was going on. As she was insured, and for sake of throughness they atarted xraying from the hock down and after doing the fetlock there was no need to go any further (oh the joy of digital xrays and instant images!). She has a large bones growth on the top edge (laterally) of the long pastern. At the time the vets were amazed at how bad the growth was compared to the degree of lameness and were not at all confident of a good outcome.

She had HA injections straight away and a fairly serious (but not quite RJ) bandage put on. This stayed on for 4 weeks and she was kept on box rest. She then had Tildren and a further 6 weeks box rest. When she was turned out she was sound for about 20 minutes and then went lame again :o She remained a field ornament (in at night) for a further 12 weeks but came sound after about 3.

We started walk work with her again at the begining of December and so far so good!. She started small amounts of trot work over Christmas ad actually went lame last week. Again very intermitent, but quite a strange action and fairly difficult to pin point a leg. The vet came yesterday and it actually seems that the cause is a bad case of Thrush in her left fore - so affecting the same trot diagonal as the dodgy hind fetlock.He was so relieved, said he had been looking at her file and the xrays before leavig to come out to us and was preparing himself for the bad news that the leg was not holding up to the increased work and that basically there is nothing further they could do.

Sotty that has turned in to an essay and is perhaps a slightly different case as we have no annular ligament issues, purely the boney changes.

Best of luck with your horse, I think patience in giving them all the time off in order to heal, and then a little more time for good measure is always a good plan.
 
hi
i thought i'd just give a little update on this horse in case anyone was interested

she was given a week to see if the injections would make any difference ,sadly they didn't work ,they took a little of the swelling down but made no difference to the level of lameness

she was then put on 4 danilon a day (2 am,2 pm) for 5 days with the thinking if this doesn't make her confortable she would be pts
she showed a huge improvement (she didn't improve on bute :confused: ) in 2 days so she is now a light hack/huge pet :)
she is now on 2 danilon per day and hoping that once she is out 24hr for the summer they can be further reduced to 1 every other day

so it is now just a case of keeping her comfortable on danilon for as long as she is happy :)
 
Have they mentioned trying cartrophen injections? My horse who has sub chondral bone disease which was diagnosed following MRI showing bony changes (around the fetlock region) but has very poor prognosis of return to full work has made an improvement following the cartrophen injections and also acupuncture. We have been long-reining in walk and improving and are due to try ridden work for the first time today. It might be worth asking your vet if they think it's worth a go. Good luck.
 
hi jacmac sorry just seen your reply now :o

sadly there was nothing else we could do for the horse :( she struggled through the end of the winter and we battled to get her out in the field for a bit of sunshine on her back hoping that would help but every time the danilon were reduced (from 4 - 2 per day) she was sore

she then came in with an abscess last week and was on two legs even with 4 danilon and the decision was made there and then to put her through no more :(
so were all gutted ,it came on so suddenly and she was only 12 and such a wonderful mare

R.I.P dear friend
 
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