Lameness and trip to the vets....please read (also in NL2)

[longtalltilly]

My horse had stem cells implanted into a large core lesion in his SDFT 7 weeks ago. He is on walking out in hand (now on 20mins a day) Any way as time has gone i have noticed he still isnt sound - its not drastic but just not him so to speak. Farrier had a look last week and noticed that in walk it is noticable but trot he seems fine!

Contacted the vet he was referred to and he has said he shouldn't be lame and it may be an idea to get either my 'normal' vet to take a look or run him over to Newmarket for them to look!

Spoke to my normal vet and he has said that he would rather the referred vet to look as he knows what he is dealing better than he does (which is fair enough)

What would you do? I need to ring the vets in the morning...

Obviously I want the best for him but the only reason im slightly unsure is due to the fact that it is noticable in walk, and i dont want them to think im wasting their time, that combined with the fact that the insurance company are being a pain and I may be facing a bill easily in excess of £2000 already! And a trip to the vets is only just over hour and a half but means id need to take a day from work!!

Cookies, cake and Wine if you get this far! x

 

[angie1]

Could you video him & send it to the referral vets so they can see how lame (or otherwise) he is?
Better to "waste their time" than ignore a problem.....
Thanks for the wine- needed that tonight!!

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

I've never exoerienced this myself but another livery on my yard has. 7 weeks sounds not nearly long enough. The other horse on my yard had this done and it's something like 10 months down the line and she's still not quite right. The vets scanned her every 6 weeks or so and the hole shrunk half millimetre by half millimetre. The stem cell transplant didn't take and I think that's half the problem, how new the technology is. The horse on my yard was on box rest with 2 x 20 mins per day on the horse walker. Can't remember if she had a tiny bit of fenced off pasture. But another vet later advised that she should NOT have been on the walker! Did your vet explain that stem cell treatment is still very new and there are absolutely NO guarantees? I would guess your ned needs to be scanned to see what is going on inside and whether the transplant has taken or not. My understanding is it's a very long haul x

 

[kerilli]

i would reduce walking out to 5 or 10 mins a day, and see if the vet could come to you and examine/scan, tbh. personally i don't like walking horses with recently-injured tendons up and down ramps and travelling them more than i absolutely have to...

 

[Missmac]

I would give it a while longer.

Charlie is 6 months into his rehab after stem cell treatment to his gastrocnemus (sp) tendon. he was scanned last week and the tendon has regenerated beautifully.

He is however still about 3/10ths lame.

So now he is turned out into a small paddock for a few hours each day. Hopefully with time he will come sound but as Box_Of_Frogs said there is always the possibility that he may never come completely sound.