DDFT/navicular in two halves

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Jadef

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Hello I'm new here joined to get some advice as every time I google, the helpful personal stories always seem to be from here.

I don't have the full story yet as I'm waiting for an mri to be done but my horse went lame around 4 weeks ago, improved then went lame again.

I had thermal imaging done which showed a 3.5 increase on the back of his knee going down his cannon bone but this didn't seem to be relevant after his lameness examination.

The lameness is hard to spot on a straight line trot up but is very noticeable in trot on the lunge (not walk or canter). He went into bell for nerve blocking and x Rays on both Front legs and it showed that his navicular bone was in two halves on his offside front leg.

The vet doesn't think this was an overnight thing and think perhaps that because his navicular bone has never fused quite right, that this put exta pressure on his DDFT and that he has injured this.

He goes in for his mri next week but I'm driving myself mad in the meantime as I just feel so heartbroken and sad for him, he's only 8 and just starting out with his competitive career and this has hit me like a tonne of bricks.

I just wondered if anyone else had gone through a similar thing and what their rehab/future and experience was like.

Thank you for reading
 
I've never heard of a pedal bone being split in two, very unusual diagnosis. The DDFT slides over it with every step a horse takes, the pressure it's under can be quite high in certain situations. To say that it never fused properly doesn't sound possible to me, if that were the case, I can't see how the horse was ever sound, especially once it began training. Put up the X-rays if you have them, you really want to be sure of the diagnosis before committing to any treatment schedule.
 
Hi it's his navicular not pedal bone. The vet from bell said as foals they are cartilage as are all bones and sometimes in rare cases they don't fuse all the way together. She said she finds it difficult to understand that he has never been lame up until now so therefore thinks it may be his tendon and that had we x rayed 5 years ago the navicular would have always been that way. He has his mri next week which will give the definite diagnosis. I wasn't asking to follow treatment plans, as the mri hasn't been done yet to know what we are dealing with, just people's own opinions and experiences. I will ask the vet if they are able to send me over the X-rays, but she described it that the normal boat shape is flatter in the middle and it goes too high at either end as you can see shadows that shouldn't be there, and that this in turn could have put more pressure on the DDFT as it may have manipulated it is such a way that weakened it.
 
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