Proud flesh fix - mild case but it worked?

[fivestrideline]

Obviously sample size here is n=1 but still! Antiseptic wash and hydrocortisone cream.

Background: woke up the 5th to a call from barn owner that horse has three good abrasions/cuts on the back of his left hind leg. His whole leg up to the hock was swollen and quite painful. SMZ’s, cold hosing, sweat wrap, and kept inside for a few days while he was ouchy and also to help keep it clean. Wounds are shallow.
By Friday the 9th he was ready to tear the barn down, though swelling now localized to the fetlock/ankle/heel bulbs. BO turned horse out, swelling came back a bit more and the two more serious abrasions are looking white and granular, much like a case of proud flesh starting (he had it as a 3YO).
Swelling and proud flesh continue, horse sound and leg barely hot if at all. Continue cold hosing and wrapping on advice of vet (who boards here and was kind enough to take a peek).
Finally on the 19th I made a vet appointment (for the 23rd) due to no improvement and hopped over to COTH to see if anyone had an insight in the meantime.
Someone here (can’t remember or find the post - I must’ve read them all tbh) suggested washing with antiseptic and putting on hydrocortisone cream. This seemed unlikely to harm and also cheap, so I grabbed some generics and lo and behold! By the 21st the swelling was almost gone, weird fleshy stuff has started to shrink, full ROM returned to the ankle.
I kept the vet appointment (because we all know if I’d canceled his leg would’ve fallen off or something. Horses are like that!) but no debridement was needed and the vet said to just keep it clean as possible. Could’ve just been timing but to have almost no change for two weeks and then a drastic improvement right when I started the hydrocortisone, makes me think maybe a relation.

Just posting here in case someone was looking for any weird ideas that might work - obviously I’m not a vet and my guy’s case was caught early and remained mild, but still. Also would be curious to know if this is a known treatment others have used and I’ve just been out of the loop for ages. Lol!

[Feathered_Feet]

Not sure who originally mentioned the hydrocortisone cream to you but I have definitely posted about it before on here because I too have had it work wonders! It worked really well for a mild case I had - I was cleaning and putting antibiotic ointment on my proud flesh case and wrapping religiously with slow, slow improvement. One day a friend recommended hydrocortisone cream - an old vet had told her to alternate hydrocortisone + antibiotic each day to bring down mild proud flesh. The different it made in my case literally overnight was remarkable. I’m definitely a believer in trying it now before having a vet come out to debride. I think I used it every third day or so for a while, but didn’t have to do much before it got it under control. Super cheap, easy fix!

[fivestrideline]

It might’ve been you! I tend to read ALLLL the posts when I’m chasing an issue. And yeah we’d been washing with betadine, using antibiotic cream and poultice/wrapping the leg for weeks. Nothing was happening. I just washed with a human antiseptic (was trying not to use any more of the BO’s betadine regardless and it was cheap) and putting on hydrocortisone afterwards. Two days later it’s basically gone.
Vet says the leg may never look as clean and tight as the other due to a bit of scarring but I’ll take it. We aren’t winning any conformation hunter classes any time soon regardless lol!

[walktrot]

The BO at my prior barn gave me a jar of something for proud flesh. Someone had left it behind. The cut was a few days old so I put some on, turned him out, and went home to look up how to treat proud flesh.

I don’t recall the name of the product, but copper sulfate was the primary ingredient. It is caustic which means it can damage healthy tissue around a wound and new flesh that is developing in the wound as it heals. It went into the garbage.

More searching, and I decided to try Equaide. It works. It’s amazing. I have used it daily on a fresh wound that healed more quickly than I thought it would. I put it on one that had granular tissue developing. It took care of it before it went into “exuberant” mode. I’m going to try it on some really old proud flesh. Proud flesh doesn’t have any nerves so you can take it off without the horse knowing about it.

The Equaide is expensive but it really does the job. A little goes a long way. It comes in a small jar with a popsicle stick and tiny paint brush. It thickens up when it hasn’t been used for a while. All you need is a tiny bit of water and you stir it with the popsicle stick. If I don’t need much I shake it and use what clings to the top of the jar. The tiny brush is great for applying it. You can do the margins of the wound without worrying about damaging healthy flesh.

I treat wounds daily usually with a chlorhexidine scrub. I don’t rub on them. I soak a gauze square and hold it on the wound, jiggling a little bit so it soaks into the tissue. It’s easy to remove any debris without pulling scabs off.