Long story short- my horse has a RF saggital coffin bone fracture. Doing well - I’m having a vet do class 4 laser, Polyglycan injections, he’s in bar shoes with casting, stall rest etc.
The first vet that treated him at the clinic said do not do PEMF, but I have been reading other opinions online that it is actually good for fractures. Not sure if he meant don’t do it right away or at all.
Does anyone have any experience with fractures + pemf?
I am a PEMF practitioner and the general rule is to wait 2 weeks after the fracture to allow it to start healing on its own. Then do a few times a week if possible for 10 mins on the actual fracture area and then spend some extra time above/below it. I would also do a full body session weekly or bi weekly for support.
I wouldn’t go against what a vet said though, so maybe clear it with them first!
Thanks! Yea totally going to clear it with the vet.
The risk with PEMF with a fresh fracture is instability. This can vary based on location. But doing lower intensity treatment after the first couple of weeks is ok. I used it on my horse with the scapula fracture. We had to be very careful for quite some time to not cause muscle twitching (as the scapula is only stabilized by all the surrounding muscle). You won’t have quite the same issues with the foot movement potential, but I wouldn’t crank up the intensity on the feet as you might do otherwise (foot paddles for Magnawave for example are pretty intense compared to other coils).
It’s also helpful to treat the whole body and compensatory structures. I spent a lot of time treating my horse’s LF ankle/foot while he was not fully weight bearing on the RF due to the fracture, for example. The general recommendation is for periodic full body treatments as well due to how the technology works on the cells.
PEMF has been approved in humans for slow healing fractures.
This is one of the only evidence-based uses of this technology–at least in humans! But I would look at the specs for the FDA-approved human bone stimulator devices, because they may not be the same as some of the equine units that are designed for different purposes. (I don’t think all pulsed electromagnets are the same!) I think the strength/speed of pulses, and the location/size of the probe are important for actually stimulating bone healing. I recall when I had a fracture in my own foot that I was able to get a used one off Ebay for a very reasonable price with quite a lot of uses still left in it.
Edited to add, here’s a fairly recent meta analysis of human studies, which includes some for fresh fractures as well as delayed union. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990885/
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