Hello all,
I have a lovely 3 year old Holsteiner that has been diagnosed with OCD lesions/cysts in both stifles. He is currently clinically lame on his left hind (baseline about a 1) and lame on both when flexed (about a 2-3).
Does anyone have any success stories with surgery, injections etc for a similar diagnosis?
TIA!
Have you had radiographs done?
[QUOTE=auleventing;8364520]
Hello all,
I have a lovely 3 year old Holsteiner that has been diagnosed with OCD lesions/cysts in both stifles. He is currently clinically lame on his left hind (baseline about a 1) and lame on both when flexed (about a 2-3).
Does anyone have any success stories with surgery, injections etc for a similar diagnosis?
Yes my now 13 year old dutch/tb had surgery bilateral stifle OCD. He recouperTed fine and we have not had issues. Total success. He was a year and a half at that time
we had one that failed a pre purchase which is how we got the diagnosis (we were sellers). She had the stifle surgery and was sound afterwards. She was a big 17.2h mare. She was sound pre surgery without flexions, however.
I would consider doing surgery on a young horse with a very good surgeon. My horse was 11 when we ‘found’ his ocd lesion on the stifle. He’s responded well to injections (done only by very good lameness vet) and good management for the past few years. He’s 13 right now.
My friend had two young horse that ended up with OCD lesions in all various joints of all 4 legs. Both different times and different breeding (horrible luck!). Both horses had surgery and successfully continued on with performance careers.
My young horse ended up with a bit of swelling in his right hock so we investigated and found a small OCD chip. I sent him back for surgery shortly after (the initial swelling and gone away) and the vet called me a few hours later saying that when he was prepping for surgery a could not locate the chip. Literally vanished. And he was fascinated, saying that there is always a small chance when the chip is small that it can be broken down and re-absorbed by the blood stream. He checked every leg that day and sent him home with a clean set of x-rays/ultrasounds all around. Horse carried on sound, no issues 3 years later.
Not bilateral, but my big TB gelding had chips removed from right stifle when he was 7 (three years ago). Injections did not hold more than a month or two before he became lame again. He had 3 large chips when the first xrays were done and they only could find 2 during the surgery. After surgery, we injected that joint once but since then he has been fine on it.
My mare had OCD diagnosed at a pre-purchase exam because of some swelling in her right hock. She had never been lame. I did my research and made the decision to buy her and have the surgery done. It’s been almost 3 years and she hasn’t had any problems.
I’ve read about some successes with various therapies helping the horse re-sorb smaller OCD chips. Equivibe and water treadmill combined, specifically. It’s a little old lady who does therapy/rehab here in TX and keeps amazing records with rads and ultrasounds, and sure as shit, at some point in 9 mos, the chip had disappeared.
OCD is extremely common in warmbloods, over 30% will have evidence of an OCD lesion somewhere. If a breeder tells you they have never had an OCD in any of their offspring they are either lying or they never Xray. We do screening X-rays in the fall/winter of the yearling year. Some lesions will go away, some we operate on. I have never, ever had a problem down the road on a horse related to an OCD lesion that was properly treated. OCDs are best operated on at a fairly young age so that the area of the lesion heals as the bone continues to grow.
In your situation, you have a slightly older (3) year old horse that is already lame due to the lesions. I would recommend that you consult a very knowledgeable vet who is very used to dealing with OCDs. The prognosis depends on the size and location of the lesions, and your accessibility to a vet very accustomed to operating on OCDs. The prognosis for your particular horse is not something you can get off the internet, unfortunately.
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