My coming 26 year old horse was diagnosed with Cushings in January, started Prascend last week. He sustained a tendon injury October-November 2022. He has been lame since. Tendon swollen. I am wondering if anybody has been in a similiar situation with their horse and whether or not the tendon healed after starting Prascend to treat the Cushings. My understanding is that the elevated cortisol levels were interfering with healing.
I am trying to get an ultrasound done to see where we are.
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My situation is similar, though a bit different timeline.
Older gelding (18)…last winter came in with swelling in the pastern (definitely a trauma - missing bell boot and chunk out of hind foot). No lameness, but treated a few days and didn’t like the swelling. Vet came and did an ultrasound…suspensory branch tear.
Gave him time off, conservative treatment, though I did still do turnout (balancing risks with some of his other medical issues) and the fact that he was sound. Put him back to walking under tack a few months later at vet instructions. Swelling returned. U/S again…still a tear.
Needless to say we did that a few times. Finally, it was better, but still disruptions in the fibers and the vet was like, this may be the best it gets. So back to work slowly and just monitor to be sure the swelling didn’t get drastically worse.
He never really got his fitness back…in the spring/summer, he got super heavy and looked almost laminitic. Vet recommended Cushing testing…he came back positive on the stim test. I would guess that the suspensory tear was an early indicator.
It was super slow healing…but he was sound, and I did put him back to work and the suspensory has not been an issue at all. But I cannot get him fit and he feels like he has aged 10 more years overnight.
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Thanks for sharing your story. I suspect that tendons, ligaments, in the entire body are affected when Cushings disease is running rampant. The odd NQR issues my horse started having that we never really found the source of, and finally led to me retiring him at 21 years of age, well now I wonder if low level Cushings was playing a role.
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