Agree. I recently PPE’d a horse with (almost) no clinical signs. Not reactive on palpation. Nothing obvious. Maybe slight reduced RoM to one side. But that wasn’t necessarily a spine issue. The horse seemed so comfortable.
The neck/back xrays were very, very bad.
I spoke with multiple vets and they were all of the mindset that if it isn’t manifesting symptomatically at the time of exam, it’s not a problem. But, maybe someday it will be. Who knows…
If I knew that the horse would be mine forever, I could tolerate the risk. However, the horse was intended to be resold in a few years and, unfortunately, I know that most buyers at that time would run screaming from the xrays.
Also, I’m a human with a chronic painful problem in my spine and I’m intimately aware of how rarely pain corresponds to xrays. We don’t know enough about spinal pain in horses or in humans.
