Help with vet-speak. Can someone help me with this? Also in NL

[Nickles1973]

As title really. Had an email from my vet this morning with some answers to questions I had posed to him about my horse's psd diagnosis. He replied to the question "how bad is it?" with this.
The pathology in his suspensories was around 3/10 with no real enlargement of the PSL on either leg but with fibre disruption in one area and poor fibre pattern over a larger area but with a large percentage of quality fibres.
I'm struggling to get my head around it and could do with some dumbing down I think lol!
I will try again to speak to my vet but he's not an easy guy to pin down (understandably very busy)
Thanks's.
N.

 

[misst]

Ok I am not a vet but I interpret this as...
approx 3/10ths of his suspensorys are "bad" but there is no enlargment of either proximal suspensory ligament. There is disruption (altering of the pattern of the way the ligament fibres lay) over a small area and a poor pattern of how the fibres lay over a larger area. But there are are a lot of good fibres and there are more "good" fibres than "bad".

I would not like to guess what this means as far as prognosis goes but my feeling is that he is saying that there is more good news than very bad news but that there is some bad news. I am not sure if that helps or not! Sorry. I hope a vet sees this and advises you better! I would ask him how other horses with this level of damage have done in the past rather than get him to relay results. Numbers and results are only meaningful if you can relate them to something else. I hope he does well.

 

[harrietSJ]

Not a vet but I read this as:

The pathology - i.e. what is happening in the proximal suspensory ligament (PSL) is 3/10 in terms of badness overall. So what they have found is:
No real enlargement (inflammation of/chronic thickening?) in either leg but there is one bit which is not so good. The rest of the fibres in the ligament aren't aligned as they should be over the larger area but there is a high percentage of these that are good quality, just not organised quite right in some places