Latest News – The Horse

Thankfully not a large part of a racetrack veterinarian’s job, severe injury of a racehorse nevertheless is one of the most visible and critical situations these practitioners must handle. Two experienced racetrack veterinarians, Mary Scollay, DVM, senior association veterinarian for Gulfstream Park and Calder Racecourses; and Celeste Kunz, VMD, chief examining veterinarian of the New York

Veterinary application of shock wave therapy has come a long way in five years, with many veterinarians now finding it helpful in the treatment of their patients. Rather than the “What is this all about, and does it work?” questions of past forums on the subject, the general consensus question at the 2003 AAEP Convention’s shock wave therapy table topic was, “How can I make this technology

Charlotte A. Lacroix, DVM, Esq. (attorney) of New Jersey, presented a session on compounding at the convention. Lacroix cautioned her veterinary audience that illegal compounding is a potential tidal wave in liability.

The FDA says a drug is any substance, food, or non-food used to treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent a disease. A drug also is any non-food substance that is intended to

While it might be easy to forget about the small accessory ligament that anchors the superficial digital flexor tendon to the upper foreleg bone (radius), acute desmitis (ligament inflammation) of this structure has now been shown to be a significant cause of pronounced, transient lameness in Thoroughbred racehorses.

EPM is a protozoal disease that causes inflammation in the brain and spinal cord of the horse. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, Morgan said there was debate whether a toxoplasma or Sarcocystis organism was the cause.

“MRI has proven to be a valuable tool for making specific diagnoses in horses with performance-limiting lameness problems,” he stated. “Navicular disease is one of the most common causes of performance-limiting lameness in many types of athletic horses. Despite the high incidence of the disease, our understanding of the problem is relatively limited.

While some forum discussions at the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) annual convention are fairly small affairs, that wasn’t true of the 2003 podiatry forum. About 65 veterinarians and farriers filled the room to discuss diagnostic analgesia, pads, Strasser trimming, ultrasound, and much more.

Tracy Turner, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, a professor of equine surgery at the

A packed room during the AAEP’s Racing Forum held sometimes heated discussions about the facts and nuances of the on-going Racing Medication and Testing Consortium’s (RMTC) attempt to create a uniform medication policy for racing in the United States. Milton McClure, DVM, a racetrack practitioner from Bossier City, La., chaired the session that centered around information presented by Scott

Many options for treating equine ailments exist–some are more traditionally performed by veterinarians in some regions, and some are often labeled as alternative therapies and might tend to fall more to non-veterinarians. Who can legally handle the treatments that are not always performed by veterinarians can be a sticky problem, which is compounded by the fact that in the United

“The results of this study strongly support the use of ultrasound to diagnose soft tissue and bony abnormalities of the entire shoulder region,” Whitcomb stated. She also noted that lesions of the infraspinatus tendon and bursa had not previously been reported, but were found in this study.

“Ultrasound was the sole means of diagnosis (of pelvic fracture) in 13 horses and was corroborated by nuclear scintigraphy or radiography in the remaining 15 cases,” Almanza said. “Ultrasound was able to provide excellent detail of the bony contours of the fracture sites and was useful in identifying associated muscle tearing and hematoma formation.”

If you’ve had equine cases of West Nile virus (WNV) pop up in your county, most of the equids in the area probably were exposed to the disease or even infected by the time those infections occurred. That is why it’s extremely important to vaccinate horses at least two months before the WNV season.

“We believe that this technique (MRI) could revolutionize the assessment of certain musculoskeletal lesions of the distal limb,” Mair said. “MRI has many advantages over other conventional imaging techniques. MRI does not use ionizing radiation and provides multiplanar, 3-D imaging capabilities.

He stressed that horse owners should begin to watch their horses’ eyes because the sooner you see something wrong, the sooner your vet can get there and the sooner the horse can be healed.

Veterinarians are using hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT)–treatment in a pressurized oxygen chamber–to treat certain illnesses and injuries in horses. They are extrapolating from human research to guide approaches for treating equine patients.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages the majority of the wild horses and burros in the United States. The agency manages these animals on the public rangelands consistent with BLM’s multiple-use mission, which takes into consideration natural resources such as wildlife and vegetation, and other users such as ranchers and recreationists