AAEP Convention 2004: Therapeutic Options Forum

While it might seem like any method of treating a horse would be termed a therapeutic option, equine veterinarians use this term to describe treatments that are generally considered alternative options to more heavily studied Western modalities. As such, the Therapeutic Options forum held during the Denver American Association of Equine Practitioners convention on Dec. 4-8, 2004, focused

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While it might seem like any method of treating a horse would be termed a therapeutic option, equine veterinarians use this term to describe treatments that are generally considered alternative options to more heavily studied Western modalities. As such, the Therapeutic Options forum held during the Denver American Association of Equine Practitioners convention on Dec. 4-8, 2004, focused primarily on acupuncture and chiropractic. Moderators Kevin May, DVM, CVA, of the El Cajon Valley Veterinary Hospital in El Cajon, Calif., and James Kenney, DVM, of Kenney & Ketner in Colt’s Neck, N.J.; and about 40 attendees discussed relevant research presented in the last year, veterinary schools providing instruction in these modalities, mainstream continuing education events, the issue of non-veterinarians practicing these modalities, and ethical use of these modalities.

“Research is very scarce, particularly the gold standard double-blind type,” Kenney said. He described two papers on acupuncture published in Equine Reseach–one on recurrent airway obstruction, the other on equine herpesvirus (EHV) testing. The first (which had questionable methods in Kenney’s opinion) found that acupuncture during an recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) attack yielded no more improvement than handling (i.e., removing the horse from a dusty environment); the second found that sensitivity at certain acupuncture points in EHV cases seemed to correlate with physical and neurological examination findings, but the association wasn’t unequivocal.

“There’s not much out there because it hasn’t been long since we started using these modalities on animals,” said Kenney. “For example, we’ve only been doing acupuncture on animals for about 20 years. In order to make these modalities part of mainstream veterinary medicine, we have to show that they work. But not being scientists, it is difficult. We need to be more educated in the science of doing this.

“Veterinary practitioners, although trained in scientific method, are not trained as researchers or how to create scientific studies,” he explained. “Subsequently, they do not create quality scientific studies. This leads to equivocal results. An example would be the recurrent airway obstruction study in which herd-bound horses were stressed by removing their companion to perform acupuncture. The stress caused release of endogenous adrenalin and cortisol, which masked the effects of the acupuncture. After all treatments, there was an improvement in maximal change in pleural pressure, pulmonary resistance, dynamic compliance, respiratory rate, and tidal volume that lasted less than 24 hours. There was no specific effect of acupuncture treatment because most of the improvements in lung function observed in the study were due to handling (i.e., stress response). Removal from the dusty environment did not produce an improvement in lung function

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Written by:

Christy West has a BS in Equine Science from the University of Kentucky, and an MS in Agricultural Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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