pedal bone infection

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tigger2

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After a problem with chronic abscesses in my horses hoof she has been diagnosed with infection into the tip of the pedal bone. My poor girl has now got to have an operation to remove the infection.

Wondered if anyone has experienced this and can give me some idea of prognosis, recovery time, how you managed the wound etc. on the xrays the bone looked undamaged but from injecting dye into the hoof we could see that the infection has reached the bony areas and has gone into where the blood vessels enter the bone. The vets are confident that they can deal with this successfully but after 3 months of battling with recurrent abscesses I feel a bit gutted that it has come to this :(
 
My mare had this operation last year. She has made a good recovery and has been competing dressage this summer. She is 20. If you put 'septic pedal osteitis' into the search box, you will see our whole story - I was a nervous wreck around the time of the operation but I'm very pleased with the outcome.
 
Exactly this - must be ten years ago now(where did that go!)

a simple flint puncture lead to a month hospitalisation as the abcess just kept coming back - turned out it had tracked into the pedal bone so having thought we'd dealt with it and it started healing the infection would brew and we'd be back to square one.

they did the operation standing and scraped back his pedal bone (seemed like half his foot but infact millimetres)

was sent home with what seemd like the vets entire supply of vet wrap for covering - having nearly bankrupted myself my lovely farrier made me a hospital plate which was a must have (possible the norm now-a-days)

the plate was on for a long time (can't recall i think months - although part of this was at my insistance as too neverous to take it off when vet suggested !)

I waited till new hard sole growth over the hole then plugged the remaining hole with keratex putty and pieces of rubber from the school (again ott but i was paranoid something would find its way into the weaker sole growth)

good news is complete recovery, he's retired now but has not had any related issues at all and no ridden/activity restrictions as a result.
 
Get the op done asap. Ive just recently seen the worst case of it Ive ever seen or heard of. Horse had a mild drop, farrier released a tiny amount of necrotic fluid. Horse got progressiely more lame with no more discharge after day 1. Leg started to fill so client got ABs for it. High dose for 5 days - swelling decreaed. then all of a sudden puss started pouring out of wound (think 1/2 cupful twice daily!). Client thought since it was draining it should be clearing up. We were called out after 5 days when no improvement of discharge and swelling reappearing. No choce but to PTS. The whole thing went from a simpledrop to PTS in 11 days. Owners did nothing wrong - just serious misfortune. This is by far the worst one i have seen though.
Get it sorted asap.

ETA - all but 1 other cases of this i have seen have been treated successfully. The other 1 resulted in an articular pedal bone fracture caused by the infection that resulted in PTS.
 
Thanks all for your replies. She is booked in for op next week so hoping it will all go as straightforward as possible. Hoping that we have caught it early as xrays done in july showed no damage to the bone at all. Not looking forward to the months of bandaging but it will be worth it to have my happy horse back!
 
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