Looking to extend time between joint injections - alternative therapies?

[luckycricket123]

My horse got his stifles injected last year. We’re trying not to inject him more than once a year, and since I had done it in the fall and he started showing signs of discomfort again after 6 or 7 months, I think I’d like to stretch him out until the early spring so I can try to overlap his best times with the months I am riding the most.

I’ve found the most helpful thing for him is keeping him in consistent light work to keep the hind end strong and loose. We’ve also been giving him daily previcox. The combination of those two things has kept him happier and more comfortable than he was before his injections, but I really wish I could get him feeling closer to how he was in the months immediately after the joint injection.

I do a round of adequan injections every 6 months, the last of which seemed to do much less than I remembered previously.

Is there anything else out there to look into in the meantime? Shockwave? Lasers? Pemf?

[Simkie]

What are you putting in those stifles, and why?

Stifles are a little different, ime, because of all that soft tissue. Steroids can make soft tissue stuff look better initially, but then it wears off pretty quickly and the horse is back to square one, or worse.

If you’ve not ultrasounded to evaluate the soft tissue in the joint, you really may want to. If there’s a minor-ish, chronic soft tissue injury, using steroids will just have you chasing your tail, and IRAP or ProStride could be a better choice for long term relief.

For maintenance, consider Surpass, especially if you can apply daily or close to it.

[luckycricket123]

I’m not sure! I am usually very hands on and involved when the vets are out, but I got him injected in November during the height of covid, so I stayed completely out of the barn when they were ultrasounding/xraying and injecting my two horses and I didn’t think to ask what they were planning to inject him with at the time.

I don’t think he’s been ultrasounded, but again I can’t swear to it because my memory often fails me and I don’t have the invoice handy.

I want to say it doesn’t seem like a soft tissue problem, because in my experience soft tissue issues tend to degrade with more work rather than improve. He made it about exactly as long as my vets had thought he might before I started noticing a shortened stride behind again, but it’s certainly not as pronounced as it was before his last injections. Of course that could be in part due to the muscling he’s built up between then and now. About how long do you expect to see issues arise again with soft tissue?

[greywithchrome]

My mare has bad stifles and has also had injections there (hers were mainly hyaluronic acid) and I found that the “alternative therapy” that helped her stifles the most was acupuncture

[knic]

One of the polyacrimide gels (arthramid or noktrex) may be an option, but I would want to do more imaging to know exactly what is going on in the stifle.