My horse with bone bruising trauma has now formed small bone cyst in the subchondral bone of the short pastern on his RF. Horse has had Osphos at the end of May, ProStride in the pastern joint a week later, and will start Adequan ten weeks after the Osphos, so August 9, Prior to treatment plan, horse was showing minor impact lameness on RF on a lameness locator, but looks sound to the naked eye. Will put the horse back on the lameness locator half way through the Adequan loading dose (to be done twice a year) and see what we have.
My vet is talking about a lower limb stem cell transfusion if the more conservative treatments don’t work. Has anyone had any experience with lower limb stem cell transfusion for bone cyst?
No experience with this. Just want to give you some Jingles! 
2 Likes
Tks! Much appreciated!
1 Like
No, to answer your question. What I have an experience (and success) with, with both of those issues, is shockwave.
Was the horse diagnosed via MRI?
1 Like
The bone bruising was diagnosed via MRI. The cyst did not show on that MRI, but showed via x-ray, several months later. Interesting to know that the shock wave worked well for bone bruising and the cyst in your situation. Thank you for sharing that. How did you find the cyst in your situation, via MRI or xray? After the shock wave treatments were you able to see healing of the cyst, or has your horse come sound and stayed sound and that was good enough?
My mare had an MRI for what looked like a small bone cyst on x-ray of her short pastern. It turned out what we saw was most likely an artifact but she did end up having what the vet hospital called a subchondral fissure of the short pastern. Best it was explained to me was it was similar to a stress fracture. Same as yours, she looked sound to the naked eye but you could feel the hesitation under saddle. We ended up doing 3 months stall rest/small paddock turnout, shockwave and pro-stride. A bone scan for an unrelated issue a year later showed no evidence of the previous injury.
Yes- I’ve used shockwave and for one bad case, a screw was implanted. Seen quite a few running a large breeding and sales farm! Dr Robert Hunt at Hagyards in Lexington KY is a fantastic diagnostician and even better surgeon.
Thanks for sharing your experience. My gelding started head tossing and not wanting to go forward. Forward thinking so very odd…MRI showed bone bruising but no bone cyst. Stall rest (2mths) and paddock rest 4 mths. Has had another 2 mths stall and run out, plus three hours a day of small pasture field (no running or playing). Treatment plan as described. Another round on lameness locator next month to see if he is still showing the minor impact lameness on that.
Thanks for another shockwave vote. I’m in Canada and a long way from Lexington KY unfortunately. Fingers crossed that this situation will be resolved by the Osphos, Pro Stride, Adequan and small paddock turn out.
