Fibrotic Myopathy ?

[maginn]

I have a 3 year old that I bred myself who appears to have this condition. The vet has been out, gave this diagnosis as his verdict, which I was expecting after doing some research online about horses with odd looking walks ! He is perfectly sound in all other paces. This seems to be a rare condition but all the research I have done seems to suggest that it gets progressively worse as eventually the affected muscle will calcify. As well as the vet I have had my osteopath look at him and neither could find any knotting on the surface muscles, suggesting that it must be a deep muscle mass which is affected. What is odd (but good) is that my horse seems to be improving. He went away for 5 weeks to be broken in & she had got him walking out on the long reins and light work after backing, but as he is so young he was only lightly ridden. He was noticeably better when he came back & although I have turned him away now if anything he is better still. I wondered if anyone else had a similar experience as I was considering surgery as an option, but I am reluctant to have this done (provided of course that they can locate the affected muscle on a scan) while he continues to improve, yet all I have read says it is better to have the surgery done sooner rather than later.....The osteopath is also worried about muscle memory if I leave it untreated, which is a concern, however it has not affected him yet, he has a lovely square pelvis, no wastage or tension anywhere.

I know some peoples horses seem to improve when they are in full work, but he has only has light work, has anyone had this diagnosis & their horse made a recovery or partial recovery ?

Has anyone used any non surgical treatments? I have started him on a course of massage, but was thinking about shockwave and acupuncture, but these is nothing online to suggest these can help.

I bred him for dressage and he is lovely, so I am gutted

 

[Birker2020]

Sorry for long reply but lots to say. I had a similiar thing with my horse in about 2011. He had a slight sprain of his lateral branch of his suspensory near fore. When it failed to heal despite having three treatments of shockwave he was considered a candidate for PRP and had this done. However he kept overloading on his near fore due to spavin in his off hind (which had been treated with three lots of Tildren and joint injections previously). This was a never ending cycle of overcompensation which resulted in the sprain failing to heal. In the end I went ahead and had fusion with ethanol in both his hocks to stop him overloading onto his near fore. I also learnt a better method of riding him in order to get him off his forehand (although this has always been difficult to acheive 100% sucessfully due to many years of being on his forehand due to his spavin).

The PRP worked really well and I started jumping him again in 2011/2012 on vets advice after a slow and gradual return of work and fitness. He was doing really well and we got 16 1/2 clears in 9 outings doing two classes each time and getting a few placings as well with an average of 40-45's horses in each class. Then one day whilst at work a staff member tied him up outside his stable to change his rug prior to turning him out and tied him next to a wheelbarrow. A couple of minutes later and Bailey was dragging the wheelbarrow up the yard with his n/f leg stuck between the frame and the front wheel of the barrow with the staff member screaming hysterically bashing the wheelbarrow against stables and tubs and panicking like crazy. How he didn't break the leg was a miracle in itself. Fortunately my physio was there and iced his leg immediately with her ice boots. After many weeks of recooperation with box rest, limited turnout, physio, LW ultrasound and pulsed magnotherapy and remedial shoeing I finally got him sound and then one day he came in from the field lame, (I believe he'd been chased by dogs and had tweaked his leg slightly again). His n/f coffin joint arthritis was treated with steroid at the time (the two out of the three tenths lameness was attributed to his coffin joint and the other to his suspensory ligament) . After a week he was no better so I gave him antoher week and then the vet came out and suggested a 3 week bute trial for his lameness. This was about eight or nine months ago. During the bute trial at his worse he was 3/10ths lame on 3 bute a day. I was at my wits end, totally dispairing. Then when I started reducing the bute he became sound again!

The vet scanned his near fore suspensory injury and found calcification in the suspensory ligament branch. He reckoned that Bailey was mechanically lame and was not able to stride out in the correct way due to this restriction/constriction but that he was not actually lame due to pain (after all he was lamer on three bute a day than 1/2 bute a day which made sense). I kept him on 1/2 sachet of bute for ages and returned to competition eventually moving him onto Buteless which he remains on today for the same reason I kept him on the bute for so long, to relieve any stiffness with his arthritis and any discomfort he may have felt on a hard surface.

He also has slight arthritis in his neck which my vet and physio have both suggested can also be attributed to a strange movement.

Occassionally on a right circle you can see he does a slight hop. This is worse on the short side. The secret is to not let him 'bowl on' to much as the hop can become obvious. Of course his bad leg is his left leg so I am assuming this hop on the right rein is some sort of overcompensation that his body had adapted from before when he first did his suspensory and was in pain.

However last week I did two unaffiliated dressage tests with a listed judge judging him and she did not spot it so I would say it isn't as apparent as it used to be. He is also a lot fitter, and now ridden six days per week, usually schooling for 25 mins a day and one day of competition/jumping at home and one rest day. He is also much slimmer now which has obviously helped.

The news at first when the calcifcation was see on xray wasn't particuarly good. The vet said that this was free floating and not attached to anything but then said that an operation to remove it would be impossible as they had done this on a cadaver and had ended up taking the whole ligament away with the calcification as it was too embedded in the ligament to remove on its own.

Luckily it never came to that and it healed on its own. This was him in March 2014 during the bute trial.http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=applecart14

If you are interested see my other videos on YouTube which I posted in order to help people who may have been in the same situation as me. I intend to update my videos when I can find the charger for my camera, to show what he is like now. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=applecart14

I did move him from my old yard to my new yard and the paddocks are a lot drier and he is not continually running around anymore which didn't help him with his suspensory injury and this in itself may have made a huge difference and the fact that he is in continual work, fitter and slimmer, where at the last yard I may have only ridden him twice a week and he was quite overweight.

**** I have posted on here to try and help this OP and would really be grateful if we could keep this in topic please and not go off on a tangent about other things which have no real bearing on this post. i do not want any more unkind words from people of the kind that I have received previously, there is no need for anymore of this. Thank you.*****

 

[maginn]

Sounds like a nightmare, I am glad your horse is now on the mend. I wonder if anyone has has a specific fibrotic myopathy diagnosis which got better ? As it is very rare there is not that much information available, even online.