HIND GUT ULCERS.......PLEASE HELP.

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BeautifulPassage

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My horse was scoped and diagnosed with grade 2 gastric ulcers 8 weeks ago and also suspected hind gut ulcers. He was re-scoped and gastric ulcers cleared up. His behaivour was much improved however he was still more unhappy/spooky than normal and still girthy.

Cue these past 2 weeks or so and he has been fairly unhappy and anxious and a NIGHTMARE to girth. Moves constantly and kicks his hind gut area when girth is being tightened and also stamps.

Had vet out today who watched him being tacked up. She suspects almost certainly hind gut ulcers. Her horse had these and acted in exactly the same way, even broncing on the spot and rearing up when girth has been done up.

My insurance isn't going to keep going much longer and vet said today that she doesn't think the answer is to re-scope and prescribe more GG. She actually suggested to me to go to Tesco's and buy some Zantac and try him on that for a couple of weeks and see if there is an improvement. She also suggested a wintec cair wide girth too as apparently that helped her horse's githiness somewhat.

Current feed is 1 scoop of Fast Fibre, 1 scoop of Alfafa-A, Yeesac, Slippery Elm, Protexin and Egusin.

Does ANYONE have ANY treatment suggestions AT ALL for HIND GUT (NOT gastric) ulcers? I honestly am at my wits end.
 
I've read on here people recommend ranitidine (that might be what's in Zantac). I think you might need prescription strength instead - vet can prescribe I think. Also look into lecithin.
 
Well my friend started treating her horse with Zantac that she bought from the supermarket just over a week ago and already his girthiness has gone. I actually mentioned this to vet and said did she think it'd be worth doing. She looked a bit bemused but said yes, worth a try. She said she administers Zantac to small animals for gastric problems but has never used it to treat equines before but it should do the same job.

She's coming back out in a couple of weeks if no improvement on it but honestly, my insurance is nearly at its limit and I am running out of money to keep throwing at these ulcers so am reluctant to keep getting prescriptions from vets unless I absolutely have to.
 
I bought a higher strength Rantacidine online via ebay actually - it came from Poland and was cheap and 75mg. I gave 15 tablets a day as a trial thing.

I have posted on here about hind gut balance and how to reestablish the good fauna/bacteria in the hindgut that the GG kills off. If you follow this regime I would imagine it may help your horse.
If you look at my post and thread link on this thread :)
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=578565&highlight=green+clay
I also fed lecithin.

This website is good:-

http://www.lunatunesfreestyles.com/horse_ulcers.htm

I am sure someone maybe Faracat or Spottedcat had a horse with a different form of ulcer that required antibiotics to treat them also. If you 'search' ulcers you will see many threads and read their posts particularly too. TrOuble may also have been the poster - sorry - I do recall some interesting stuff.
My vet also prescribed a drug Sucralfate akongside the GG - this was a cheap drug and acts as a buffer - it may be worth asking your vet if it would help hind gut ulcers. My horse had one in the pyloric region - these are hard to treat.

Hope this helps OP.
 
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YasandCrystal said:
I bought a higher strength Rantacidine online via ebay actually - it came from Poland and was cheap and 75mg. I gave 15 tablets a day as a trial thing.

I have posted on here about hind gut balance and how to reestablish the good fauna/bacteria in the hindgut that the GG kills off. If you follow this regime I would imagine it may help your horse.
If you look at my post and thread link on this thread :)
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=578565&highlight=green+clay
I also fed lecithin.

This website is good:-

http://www.lunatunesfreestyles.com/horse_ulcers.htm

I am sure someone maybe Faracat or Spottedcat had a horse with a different form of ulcer that required antibiotics to treat them also. If you 'search' ulcers you will see many threads and read their posts particularly too. TrOuble may also have been the poster - sorry - I do recall some interesting stuff.
My vet also prescribed a drug Sucralfate akongside the GG - this was a cheap drug and acts as a buffer - it may be worth asking your vet if it would help hind gut ulcers. My horse had one in the pyloric region - these are hard to treat.

Hope this helps OP.
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Thanks very much for the info. Did the Rantacidine help at all? What is Lecithin?

Trust me to probably have one of the hardest to treat ulcers! Wouldn't surprise me!
 
BeautifulPassage said:
Thanks. I will look into both of them.

How long until you saw improvements on the UL30REX? Was she girthy to tack up?

This is absolutely breaking my heart every single day now. He is tucked up and just doesn't seem happy and I can't ride him because tacking him up is a nightmare. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.
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Well to be honest mine's girthiness (which had been extreme!) wasn't resolved by clearing her gastric ulcers, it remained after that. It was cleared by an osteo resolving muscle pain around the girth, pectorals and chest area. The treatment was very deep and hard work (and part of a longer regime of treatment) but when he worked on her underneath it was like he flicked the girthiness off like a switch. Mine came to me with ulcers and had lived with them for a while, so had laid down all kinds of muscle tightness bracing against the discomfort. What remained after that was reactiveness further back on her barrell. So you can girth her fine, but stroke up her flank and she'd swing for you. She got better (not perfect but def better) within a week of soaked hay, no sugar, and added UL30REX+...
 
Also - bacterial ulcers tend to be of the gastric variety so if that was the case the stomach wouldn't be clear at rescope. If your horse has an irritated hind gut you'd prob want to avoid antibioics unless you know you definitely need them, as you want all the friendly bacteria in the gut you can get...
 
philamena said:
Well to be honest mine's girthiness (which had been extreme!) wasn't resolved by clearing her gastric ulcers, it remained after that. It was cleared by an osteo resolving muscle pain around the girth, pectorals and chest area. The treatment was very deep and hard work (and part of a longer regime of treatment) but when he worked on her underneath it was like he flicked the girthiness off like a switch. Mine came to me with ulcers and had lived with them for a while, so had laid down all kinds of muscle tightness bracing against the discomfort. What remained after that was reactiveness further back on her barrell. So you can girth her fine, but stroke up her flank and she'd swing for you. She got better (not perfect but def better) within a week of soaked hay, no sugar, and added UL30REX+...
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Yes, this is what I'm worried about. Though he has been seen by both osteo and physio in the past month and neither have detected any soreness/tightness around there I don't think? Am going to get them back out anyway I think just to double check.
 
BeautifulPassage said:
Thanks very much for the info. Did the Rantacidine help at all? What is Lecithin?

Trust me to probably have one of the hardest to treat ulcers! Wouldn't surprise me!
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The Rantacidine did help to show me that my horse had ulcers, but bear in mind that it works in the same way as GG by shutting down the stomach acid pumps to a degree. The difference is that Rantacidine is not long acting it only has an effect for round 4 hours so you would need to trreat a horse through the night etc to replace GG with it.

Take a look at the Luna website - she has some great info on there about ongoing supplements to feed an ulcer prone horse. Lecithin is another recommended supplement see below:-

There is a better way to protect the horse from and treat gastric ulcers. When the horse is given lecithin as a nutritional supplement to his normal diet, the acid in the fundic portion of the stomach immediately breaks it down into a mix of reactive phospholipids. The phospholipids in lecithin are both hydrophilic and hydrophobic and interact with the cell membranes of the mucosal epithelium to strengthen the mucosa. Research has shown that lecithin not only treats the symptoms of equine ulcers, it cures the ulcers as well by making the stomach lining stronger at the cellular membrane level. The beneficial effects of a diet supplemented with lecithin also enhances the rest of the digestive tract as well. There has been much research to substantiate this. They also observed horses fed lecithin had reduced levels of excitability and anxiety that was attributed to the healing of gastric ulcers.
 
Ranitidine works differently to gastrogard and is effective on hindgut ulcers whereas GG can make them worse, the vet can prescribe bigger dose ranitidine tablets (300mg), my boy had 8 weeks of these and hadn't shown any symptoms since.

Yasandcrystal - don't suppose you have a link to the lecithin research, sounds interesting.
 
I too think the lecithin factor sounds very interesting... there was another thread which had a copy and paste of it in here somewhere a few days ago...

Ranitidine does work by reducing stomach acid, similarly to GG, but operates in a different way (not by inhibiting the proton pump, but by inhibiting the natural chemical reaction which stimulates the cells to create the acid). So I'm not sure how it would be effective on hind gut ulcers, but it's interesting if it definitely has been? But then much of our diagnosing of them is a best guess anyway, and if something worked and horse is happier then it's all worth a go.

I wonder whether too many vets are prescribing GG without Antepsin which works by binding to the surface and protecting it from the remainnig acid....
 
It was Dr Ridgeway who recommended ranitidine to me, it's use is more common in America. When I discussed it with my own vet she knew of its use overseas too, maybe it's just our country that reaches for the GG, and maybe as you say not alongside antepsin.
Worryingly I know of someone who's vet was adamant that hind gut ulcers didn't even exist!
 
slinkyunicorn said:
Zantac's action is similar to Gastrogaurd - it works on stomach/gastric ulcers not hind gut and they both only work while they are being taken. As soon as the course finishes the signs and symptoms will reappear.

BeautifulPassage I will PM you :)
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Gastroguard is an acid inhibitor it prevents the horse producing as much acid .
Zantac reduces the acidity of the acid in the stomach and wears off soon after the dose ,and can be helpful for horses who suffer the splash type ulcers as a management tool
Gastroguard does cure ulcers but in some horses they may return because the reasons the horse got ulcers remain so new ulcers form.
If a horse has the type of ulcers that form around the exit of the stomach I would always treat with antibiotics at the same time as the gastroguard.
 
maggiesmum said:
It was Dr Ridgeway who recommended ranitidine to me, it's use is more common in America. When I discussed it with my own vet she knew of its use overseas too, maybe it's just our country that reaches for the GG, and maybe as you say not alongside antepsin.
Worryingly I know of someone who's vet was adamant that hind gut ulcers didn't even exist!
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Well, Richard Hepburn, who specialises in the GI tract, and who scoped my horse originally says they don't exist *in the way people tend to interpret them, ie in the same form as gastric ulcers* - ie people think it's the same kind of thing with the same causes and same treatments. Hind gut irritation may not be ulceration, may be acidosis, may be other sensitivities, but by the time you've got actual ulceration *in the same way as you have in the stomach* you're looking at colitis and a supremely ill horse. So some vets take a dim view of us calling all hind gut discomfort "hind gut ulcers". I'm less fussed about the definitions, but do think quite seriously that while the two issues - stomach ulcers and different types of hind gut irritation - may often appear at the same time because they share some of the same causes, they need to be treated (in both senses of the word) as two different things.
 
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