IBS

[oscarwild]

My vet has been out to my horse for the last 2 and a bit months trying to figure out what was up with my boy.

After repeating his bloods it showed up chronic inflammation. Which my vet said was either in kidneys or intestines. But from the symptoms Oscar had he said he was 99.9% positive that it was in his intestines. So he did a biopsy which showed up non specific inflammation in his intestines. Vet said next step would be to put him into hospital and allow them to do a investigation into it to get a specific location for the inflammation. But if Oscar is still comfortable and stable on the steroids then we would leave if for a while to see if it develops further.

He said that its irritable bowel syndrome and just to keep monitoring Oscar and see what happens. But I've never heard of it in horses before and wondered if anyone has came across it before and could shed any more light on it for me.

Thanks for your time

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

If it was me hun, I'd get a referral to a specialist centre. Your vet might be just short-handing the terminology to help you understand but I suspect your horse may have something worse than the inconvenience that people get with IBS (which is often controllable with the right diet). I'm presuming your horse has intermittent diarrhoea. Is he losing/has he lost weight? What was it made the vet think it might be kidneys? Did he do a urine test? If your horse's blood test shows he's fighting some chronic infection then you need to know what it is. There are some nasty diseases in horses that start with unexplained weight loss and scouring. How old is your horse and is he a grey? If he has his steroids in his feed or as an injection, then you need to be aware of the laminitis risk. The more/longer he takes them, the worse the risk. How long has it been going on and do you know what the trigger was that started it? Definitely, specialist centre to nip this in the bud before things spiral out of control x

 

[oscarwild]

To be honest I don't actually now when it all started. I know that makes me sound like a bad mum, but Oscar was on 4 month boxrest last year due to eye ulcer and he wouldn't go outside and was really bad to handle when he came off boxrest. So I had to move yards to get my horse out into a herd so he could learn to be a horse again. So he was out 24/7 for 3 months with little handling. But after that he was coming in for short spells etc because his eye flared up on vet instructions. It was only when he was in for 12 hrs during the day and I noticed that he wasn't peeing but he was drinking that I noticed there was a issue and contacted my vet.

That would have been around 3 months ago. The vet did tests on him which didnt show much and during the time the intermittent diarrhoea got worse. After a month the vet repeated the tests which is where the chronic inflammation showed up. He said that with the test the inflammation had to be kidneys or intestines. With symptoms Oscar had he said it was intestines. As his kidney function etc came back on tests fine. His urine sample was also fine.

So he took a rectal biopsy once we took Oscar off the steroids which showed up non specific inflammation in his intestines. Then as the steroids are the only thing that hae controlled the symptoms Oscar has he was put back on them. He's currently on a low dose for another month or so and then we are going to take him off them and see what happens. As it could be something he is eating during the summer that is causing the problem.

He's 7 years old and is bay. During this he lost a small amount of weight but he never looked underweight. He tends to keep his weight rather well. Since he's been back out full time and working again his weight is great and so far we have had no further diarrhoea.
No idea what started it off but it may have been something he has eaten or damage from when he escaped out his field last year and did a rotational fall and bruised everything quite badly :/

I'll speak to the vet about a speciallist centre and see what he says about it.

 

[galaxy]

My horse had chronic diarrhoea for 4 months controlled by codiene and steroids.


His bloods showed nothing but inflammation. Rectal bopsy showed nothing. He was just about to be referred to have an intestinal biopsy when he had a major turn for the worse (melanomas suddenly multiplied and blocked him up) and I had him PTS. On post mortem he had tumours throughout his entire system.

If yours is bay, it won't be melanomas. I hope you get to the bottom of it!