04/10/24

16HH Showjumper, 13yrs of age.

Injury : Hole in lateral branch of the superficial digital flexor tendon below the fetlock and tearing of the deep digital flexor tendon in the pastern region.

The owner called on us to monitor the healing after vets advised 6 weeks of box rest. Sadly we did not scan the horse as soon as the injury happened so have no base comparison scans, however we can still see what is going on. Interestingly the affected nearside hindlimb confirms temperature increased of 3/5 degrees when compared with the same bilateral regions.

Furthermore the Thermal scanner can detect areas of compensations, as seen here in the images you can see the opposite hindlimb in FIG 1 has increased thermal patterns on the cannon bone, and FIG 3/6 show increases of thermal pattern in the hock ( with no significant temperature difference) this does however mean there has been some uneven weight bearing during her 6 weeks box rest causing stress on the opposite joint.

The thermal scans allows us to visualise what is going on beneath the skin, to the healing process, AND treat the uninjured leg that she has been compensating on. A huge percentage of horses which injure one limb them go onto injure the bilateral limb in the future, due to compensation. Thermal scanning both limbs allow us to monitor and fix areas of compensation, as well as injury!