Cataracts question

[rcm_73]

Anyone out there with a horse with cataracts that could give me some info? My 16 y.o. mare was diagnosed with bone spavin a few months back and has also since gone very cloudy in one eye and very slightly cloudy in the other eye..to me this looks like a cataract(s) (vet coming out to do x rays on hock next week, so will ask him to look). This cloudiness seems to have appeared very suddenly, is that normal? It seems to fill almost all of the pupil. What is likely to be the outcome? The mare seems to be able to see where she is going but has always been spooky and a bit of a head-shaker since I bought her (I've had her two years) but I'm wondering now if the cataract(s) were there when I bought her two years ago?

 

[Marnie]

Years ago I had a pony with cataracts, you couldn't actually see anything in his eyes, it was picked up when I came to sell him. Once we knew, a few things fell into place - he always stopped for a couple of seconds when putting him in his stable or loading him, he often stopped at jumps going into woods or out of woods where the light changed and he sometimes took the back rail off parallels. With sympathetic riding, these things weren't a problem. They did progress, but he was used as a hack for a number of years after first picking them up. This was a long time ago, and there was no real treatment - things may have changed since then though.

Could she have scratched her eye or got an infection?

 

[Persephone]

My mare has a small cataract in one eye as a result of injury. It's a small cloudy looking patch.

 

[Honeyb]

My horse always gets a cloudy eye in the summer. It looked to me like cataract, but my Vet told me it was called a Keratopathy (not sure if this is the right spelling).

I have to apply a cream to his eye twice a day which works wonders.

 

[LusoLover]

My pony had one fully formed one in the one eye and one forming in the other eye. It was picked up as he started spooking and then if you waved your hand in front of his eye, he wouldn't react. Hopefully it isn't this, but if so, then don't panic. It was diagnosed in in my pony in the September and the week before he was PTS the following Feb, I was still galloping him around the fields, you just had to be aware of it when handling him.

 

[kerilli]

if you had her vetted when you bought her, the vet should have picked up on it if she had it then.
my old Advanced event mare got a cataract, her eye suddenly went cloudy as you have described. the first i knew of it was when she started loose jumping very erratically - smooth and forward on the rein with the good eye on the inside, adding strides and slowing down on the rein with the affected eye on the inside. i still didn't twig, till i took her xc, turned fairly sharply (on her blind side, as i found out later!) to a huge trakhener under a tree, and she didn't see it at all... i swung her aside at the last stride when i realised she hadn't seen it, and circled, and then she jumped it fine from a straight approach. end of her career though - because it had come on so fast, the vet said she wouldn't be safe over big tracks any more, just in case.
she was fine, but about 3-4 years later the cataract burst and her eyeball filled with blood. she wasn't in any pain, but the vet said pressure would build up and it would pain her, and we had to have her pts.
rip Dottie, the best horse i'll ever have.

 

[mollymurphy]

Mo (the bay in my sig) has cataracts. The vet found them when we had her vetted. We'd already had her on loan for 9 months and had never suspected a thing. She still shows no signs of them. We took her to see Prof. Knottenbelt at Leahurst and he said that the type she has should never cause her any problems and he doubts she's even aware of them. Her eyes arent cloudy in any way, but under closer inspection you can see little triangular-shaped 'things'.

Hope yours turns out to be nothing.