Horses can find trouble in even the best of housing conditions. One of the more dreaded injuries is one that involves synovial structures—joints or tendon sheaths. While the best-case scenario would be preventing these wounds in the first place, sometimes they inevitably happen.

At the 2015 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention, held Dec. 5-9 in Las Vegas P.O. Eric Mueller, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVS, of the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and Kevin Claunch, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, of Weems and Stephens Equine Hospital, in Texas, led a table topic discussion on how to handle lacerations involving synovial structures. Following are some of the questions attending veterinarians asked.

Q: What is best approach to wire injuries?

These are frustrating wounds, especially if the wire has formed a tourniquet around the limb. Usually there is delayed necrosis (tissue death): “Trouble is coming; wait for it,” Claunch warned, adding that there is no way to reliably prevent worsening of the injury due to loss of blood circulation and friction from the wire