You’ve found the perfect buyer for your sale horse, pending the results of a prepurchase exam by his or her veterinarian. And just when you think the deal is done, the veterinarian takes a radiograph, pauses, and points out a very noticeable bone chip in your otherwise flawless horse’s fetlock. After the buyers pass on your horse, your own veterinarian examines him. He tells you that while not all radiographic abnormalities cause performance problems, there’s a good chance this one could.

This is a common scenario for sport horse practitioners. At the American Association of Equine Practitioners’ Focus on Poor Performance meeting, held Sept. 10-12 in Lexington, Kentucky, Sarah M. Puchalski, DVM, Dipl. ACVR, reviewed with attendees the associations between performance issues identified on radiographs. Puchalski is a diagnostic imaging consultant based at Circle Oak Equine Sports Medicine, in Petaluma, California, and Palm Beach Equine Clinic, in Wellington, Florida.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that, with the high-intensity work equine athletes are often asked to perform, sport horse practitioners commonly stumble across bone chips and spurs, osteochondrosis, and other bone abnormalities in these horses. However, not all affected horses present in the same manner—and some presentations are easier for veterinarians to diagnose than others.

“The easiest situation to interpret is when these findings are limited to the lame leg, in a site localized via examination or diagnostic analgesia,” Puchalski said. “But most often, this is not the case