Suspensory ligament branch injuries are common in equine athletes such as show jumpers, dressage horses, and racehorses. | Photo: iStock

Suspensory ligament branch injuries are common in equine athletes such as show jumpers, dressage horses, and racehorses. While their prognosis in sport horses is fair, in Thoroughbred racehorses it’s poor.

At the 2018 British Equine Veterinary Association Congress, held Sept. 12-15, in Birmingham, U.K., Ian Wright, MA, VetMB, DEO, Dipl. ECVS, HonFRCVS, hospital director of Newmarket Equine Hospital, in Suffolk, U.K., described how to treat these tears surgically to bring racehorses back to function.

The suspensory ligament, which runs down the back of the cannon bone, divides into two branches that attach to the sesamoid bones at the back of the fetlock. Injury to these branches of insertion causes significant wastage in Thoroughbreds, said Wright. Because suspensory ligament branch (SLB) tears heal by scar tissue, horses cannot recreate the structure post-injury. So Wright hypothesized that removing the affected tissue would help these horses heal