Current EPM Rates Show Better Diagnostic, Treatment Options

At the time, EPM caseloads were steady and practitioners perceived they were dropping or staying the same in their practices. Seven years, more specific diagnostics, and an additional EPM treatment product later, what’s the picture? The research team wanted to find out.
“What we wanted to do in this particular study was to calculate the proportional morbidity rate (PMR), which is an indicator of incidence in a population of horses for EPM … that were presented to the veterinary medical teaching hospital over a period of time,” he said. Incidence is the number of new cases of a specific diagnosis in a specific population during a specific period, divided by the total number of all diagnosed cases in that same population. So, in this study, it would be the number of EPM cases among all the veterinary teaching hospitals 1990-2015 divided by the total caseload (excluding field service cases and well-animal checks).
Eighteen and nine veterinary colleges reported their EPM numbers to the Veterinary Medical Data Base (VMDB) from 1990-2006 and 2007 to 2016, respectively, and total caseload counts over that time. Andrews reported those teaching hospitals made 2,111 diagnoses of EPM from 263,862 accessions. So, the overall PMR was 0.8% in 25 years, he said, and probably underestimated based on population
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