Damaged navicular bursa - anyone had any experience of this?

Busybusybusy

Busybusybusy

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www.racehorsetoridinghorse.blogspot.co.uk
So after a pretty hellish week I have found out that my horse has damaged his navicular bursa, which I understand is irreparable. He has had lameness work up and X-rays to both front feet. The damage is in the off fore, the near fore is ok. The DDFTs are ok as are the navicular bones, however the coffin bone is also flat in the off fore.

He is now on a low sugar diet with supplements for both hooves & joints, and is due to be seen by excellent farrier/trimmer in January. I have just moved yards and was advised by the farrier that it would be best if he came about a month after I had moved my horse.

Does anyone have experience of this? What is the prognosis & can there be improvements with either barefoot or remedial shoeing?
 
My horse had an inflamed navicular bursa 3 yrs ago when she had a tear to her DDFT within her hoof, found by MRI. She had it medicated twice, the first time it only lasted 2 months or so, the second time she is fine and has been ever since. Don't know if thats similar to your situation. My mare had egg bar shoes for several months but is now back in quarter clip normal shoes and lives out. Been sound ever since her injury - says she touching wood!
 
Busybusybusy said:
So after a pretty hellish week I have found out that my horse has damaged his navicular bursa, which I understand is irreparable. He has had lameness work up and X-rays to both front feet. The damage is in the off fore, the near fore is ok. The DDFTs are ok as are the navicular bones, however the coffin bone is also flat in the off fore.
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Sorry you've had a bad week :(

There are a couple of things I don't understand here.

1. How can your vet know that there is no damage to the ddft if there have only been xrays? My understanding its that this is impossible to know without an MRI scan.

2. What damage can be seen to the navicular bursa? That is, as far as I understand, the soft tissue sac and fluid surrounding the joint. I thought that an xray would only show that the bursa was damaged if you could see effects in the bone?


When you say the coffin bone is flat, does that mean that it is lacking concavity in itself, or does that mean that it is lying too flat to the floor? The first cannot be changed and the other is easy to fix with proper stimulation to the back of the foot, most easily done barefoot (plus the diet changes you are already making, to strengthen the laminar bond with the coffin bone).
 
You won't be able to see damage to that area with out MRI I'm afraid. I have a horse on my yard with problems to the Navic bursa. (Fluid) The owners had full work up after X-rays which only showed a minuscule change compared to the horses previous grade 1 X-rays. it was the MRI that showed the full story. No damage to ddft meant they medicated and used Tildren to help the bone surrounding. the horse competes at high level in bar shoes and apart from the 1 day of initial lameness has been fine since and done 3days etc. it won't be doing the job in it teens but with MRI's and close monitoring they're pretty positive with it. My advice would be get an MRI if you can.
 
mynutmeg said:
You can see the ddft on ultrasound scan as this is how my mare was diagnosed with a tear in her ddft
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The ddft runs right down the back of the leg and into the foot and this horse has injury to it inside the foot. It's routine to scan it outside the foot, but was yours inside the foot? I understand that it is possible to ultrasound scan parts of it inside the foot but only if you pare the frog severely?

OP was an ultrasound done?
 
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