SI Injury/Strain - stories, treatment, prognosis...

viola

viola

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Could you please share your experiences with SI (sacroiliac) injuries? Any info, good and bad as want to learn more about it.
Friend and I bought a horse who went lame virtually the week he arrived and he has since been diagnosed with SI strain. He had steroid injections which resulted in big improvement but we still have a long rehab in front of us due to various compensatory muscular problems (and who knows, there might be another site of problem we are yet to learn about
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Please share your stories or links to any info.
Thank you.
Here's the boy in question enjoying the snow and doing nothing since early Spt... [image]
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If you search the site for supraspinous ligament or SI injuries you will probably find quite a few responses.

In fact I answered one not so very long ago. I haven't got the time today to write a long answer so hopefully if you run the search you'll find it.

Happy Xmas
 
I've made lots of posts about this subject - as have many others on HHO. Do a search and you should find them. I think to sum up I can say mixed prognosis, othen it's not the only problem, and don't get your hopes up! ...she says from bitter experience...!

ETS: I found my early gathering-together of links, but there have been plenty more since then: SI compendium!
 
Thank you very much for the link!
Yes, I have since gone through the site as advised and found a lot of material, some positive some not so much...

My horse has so many muscular problems on top of SI that if he is any rideable by next Xmas I will be happy...
 
Oh
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What muscular problems is your horse suffering? We also have back muscular problems (longissimus dorsi mostly) - and we're having physio appointments to try to address the pain and doing lots of carrot stretches etc.

It's a nightmare isn't it? How can they be so fragile?! I wish your horse a very speedy recovery.
 
Thank you same to yours, and yes they are so weak really, it's quite heart breaking.

As to muscular problems: compensation for compensation for yet another compensation
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We have vet and physio working on him as a team, lots of carrot stretches too. We had him steroids injected which made a massive difference but we are only just bringing him back to work (with walking for 10 minutes etc only) so hard to say what the outcome is going to be.

Best of luck with your horsey. I am documenting the rehab of my horse on here: http://freelanceinstructorsdiary.blogspot.com/search/label/Kingsley%27s%20Rehab if you want to have a look.

How was yours diagnosed?
 
Oo thanks for the link, I'll have a look. Ron was diagnosed with a bone scan. Initial thoughts were that he'd fractured his pelvis, he was in so much pain, but thankfully it wasn't that. We then had 2x steroid injections in to the joint (which made him sound). They think it's a joint problem as opposed to a ligament strain. He had ultrasound of the liagment when diagnosing subsequent lameness (turned out to be PSD) and back pain and they couldn't see anything wrong with the ligament or joint, but this was 3-4 months after the initial SI injury.

We're still bilaterally lame, over a year later, but no-one is quite sure why - could be SI still being a problem, could be the back muscle pain, or could be the PSD wounds that broke down and formed adhesions. Hopefully your experience will be more positive! I'll have a read of your blog and will bookmark it.
 
Oh dear, that sounds bad
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PSD is very much what worries me too as before the injections he was also biletarally uneven (I say uneven as oppose to lame as he was never really described as lame as such; it's just the oddness of gait/lack of pushing power and seemingly general lack of coordination). If you have time to look at videos on my blog you will see what I mean.
At his worst, in Spt, he was 1/10 lame on the right hind. But very similar scenario - nobody really knows where is the egg where is the chicken...

I will keep an eye on your posts. Hope you will get to the bottom of it.
Ours became a rehab project from a competition project
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My horse has SI problems and is currently on a lunging programme supervised by phsio who visits once a fortnight. On left rein horse looks really good, but on the right my horse moves short behind, especially on the near hind and cannot bend through the body. When the SI problem arose, shortly afterards we also threw a big hind leg splint on the off hind. This appears settled now. We have been going now for 6 weeks and are going over trotting poles with lots of stretching work. I want to do some dressage long term and worry that we might not be up to it.
 
The lack of bend through the body is what my horse shows too. He is getting much better as far as straightness goes on the left rein but still weak and unbalanced on the right rein.
We are not allowed to lunge though or do any circle work. Straight lines only. He's mostly on walking rehab with 1-2 trot transition per session, lots of walk to halt making sure he uses his hindlegs in downwards transitions and no trotting as such, just a few steps.
We are now up to 22 min of walking.
He is 200% stronger than when we started 12 weeks ago (he had steroid injections though so might be different type of rehab to yours) but this strength is only relevant. In comparison to a completaly sound horse he is still very much unsound through his body.
Although we work a lot on stretching too, our physio wants him working in poll high outline also and with very active hindleg.
Our physio is very pleased with his progress and confident he can make it to light work so we shall see.
Good luck with yours!
 
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