Nerve blocks ?

[Donna40]

My 11 year old cob has occassional lameness that has baffled the vet. Some days he is sound, other days he is lame.
On a recent visit I trotted him up for the vet.
The first time he seemed lame on the near-fore, the second on the off-hind, the third the off-fore and the fourth time he was sound.
The vet has suggested nerve blocking. Is this the same as de-nerving ?
Any advice welcome.

 

[puddicat]

Nerve blocking is a diagnostic procedure in which the nerves that communicate pain to the CNS are temporarily disabled by injecting a local anaesthetic around the nerves. Different areas of the leg are supplied by different nerve branches so if the nerve branch reporting pain from the affected part is blocked the horse should go sound.

De-nerving is a surgical procedure in which a section of the nerves communicating pain form an area of the limb are removed rendering the animal insensitive to pain in that area.

The best advice you could receive is to ask your vet these questions, seek advice from them and disregard information you get from an open forum. Your vet is a highly trained professional, people who reply to posts on this forum generally are not.

 

[star]

no, nerve blocking is completely different from de-nerving which is a permanent procedure used to treat some conditions. I agree with puddicat - take advice from your vet and ask them questions if they say something you dont understand. Nerve blocking is simply the next step in investigating a lameness. There are lots of points up the leg that can be injected with local anaesthetic and temprarily numb that part of leg so if the area of pain is in that part the horse will go sound - the only way to track down the source of pain as horses cant tell us where it hurts. once the area of pain is found, then xrays or ultrasound scans can be used to try and detect exactly what is wrong. it would cost a fortune just to xray the whole leg given that 4 views of each joint are normally taken so there is a need to localise the source of pain first.