Anybody seen inflammation on a bone scan (or, I suppose, an MRI?) of the distal radius (near the growth plates in the knee joint) in an adult horse? In a young horse, you’d probably call it physitis and look for a cause, but, in a 9 year old warmblood?
We’re in the process of getting yet a third opinion from another vet hospital, but since neither the googles nor the first two vets have a theory, I figured I’d ask around.
Well yes, I’ve had a case. But in a 3 yr old TB race horse. In race training, having missed out on 2 yr old race training. He had been kicked in the outside splint bone, broken that, as a 2 yr old, and it had taken a year to set up, then one of my race owners bought him (on my recommendation). After his first few workouts at three, the growth plates above his knees were swollen and tender. No bone scans available in those days. Experienced race track vet ran his hands over it, and said the horse had warmed up his growth plates. No xrays taken or necessary. No problem, give him some time to cool them out. We did that. It went away, and the horse had no further problems with it. It’s like “bucked shins”, but not on the shins. We felt that the horse had not had enough exercise (during his stallbound period with the broken splint bone- it was a high break and was not operated on) as a two year old to correctly “season” the maturing growth plates, missing out on regular 2 yr old race training.
Has your horse recently been exposed to concussive exercise that he has not previously experienced? Very strange in a horse as old as 9. More understandable in a 3 yr old.
Don’t know if this story is helpful to you, but you asked, and it’s likely a fairly rare situation, especially with a 9 yr old. Good luck!
I wonder why they called that growth plates?
By now those are adult structures and should have finished ossifying long ago, no more growth plate there?
Sounds like the joint articulation has some cartilage problems, maybe mice in there that is causing the irritation?
Then, what do I know, I would keep asking questions, as you are.
Go find a well respected lameness specialist and see what they tell you.
In our 600 mile around area there are three such top specialists.
Even regular lameness specialists send their more difficult cases to one of them for review.
They did one of our horses with a hock problem.
Ask around, be sure your third opinion be from a vet as high up as possible.
Adult horses don’t have growth plates (aka physes), I’d be worried about a fracture or similar.
After a lot of hemming and hawing and “hmm, that’s odd” ing, our vet, the specialist who did the bone scan, and the specialist specialist we sent the bone scan results to for another opinion are all inclined to think some kind of bone bruise/edema.
As to the concussion question, he was imported from Germany in October, but he’s spent most of the time since then in a sand arena and jumping significantly less than he was over there, so that seems unlikely, but we haven’t ruled it out.
The lameness was spontaneous (fine one day, horribly not fine the next, slowly improving), so the operating theory is that he likely got cast in his stall (or similar). He’s now mostly sound (though he’s bonkers from stall rest, so watching him trot out is mostly revelatory of his absurdly high energy level rather than anything else), so whatever that swelling is doesn’t seem to be crippling him on a day to day basis, but beyond that it’s not clear. The RIU on the bone scan was bilateral, but worse on the left front side (which was the side that presented as lame).
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