What does this mean?!

[Holloa]

Just had a horse vetted and it failed - I'm not going to buy it, but one thing that came up was:

' Membrane on back of lens adhered, not progressive.'

Please can any vets or informed people explain what this actually is?
Thank you!

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

It means the horse has had some sort of eye problem - possibly uveitis. The inflammatory process within the eyeball can cause adhesions which can prevent the structures within the eye such as the iris, lens etc from working properly as they get stuck to other structures by the adhesions. They say not progressive so I'm guessing it is currently stable. However, if it was due to uveitis, that disease is notorious for returning on a regular basis (hence old name of moon blindness). It could have been a field injury to the eye or an auto immune process that is currently in remission. Glad you're not buying the horse as you'd need to know a lot more about the history, about what caused the eye problems and about what a realistic prognosis might be for the future. At best, you could have a horse with limited vision in one eye (or in both eyes if the vet report noticed that on both eyes) and at worst you could end up having to remove the eye, which is very very expensive. And almost certainly with a vet report like that, your insurers would exclude any further eye treatment. If you own a horse that develops potentially serious eye problems, then you deal with it coz he's your horse. However, to buy one with the same potential for expense and heartache is another matter.

 

[Holloa]

Thank you Box of Frogs- very interesting. * scuttles off to look up about Uveitis on Google*