Improving Bone Chip Rehabilitation

Arthroscopic surgery has become a common treatment for horses suffering lameness issues caused by bone chips in the knee. The standard rehabilitation program after that surgery involves a lot of rest.
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If there is one thing most horsemen know well, it is the way things have always been done. The conventional paths to feeding, shoeing, training, and rehabilitating horses are processes that came to be tried-and-true for a reason: they usually accomplished the end goal. Today, the combination of research, technology, and, to some extent, an entrepreneurial spirit, has slowly eroded the bastions of tradition and made room for new ideas to become the standard by which others are measured.

Veterinary medicine has made huge strides, thanks in part to advances in diagnostic capabilities and treatment modalities. A unique research project that combines both might prove to be the best answer for horses with bone chips in their knee joints.

Arthroscopic surgery has become a common treatment for horses suffering lameness issues caused by bone chips in the knee. The standard rehabilitation program after that surgery involves a lot of rest. Wayne McIlwraith, BVSc, PhD, DSc, FRCVS, Dipl. ACVS, director of Orthopedic Research at Colorado State University, said, "Typically, horses recovering from this type of surgery get about two weeks of stall rest, followed by a few more weeks of hand-walking. Gradually, as the joint recovers, the horse can be walked for longer periods of time. It can be 60 days before the horse might be ready to go back to light work."

But time, especially for a Thoroughbred racehorse, is a golden commodity. The time allotted for resting the joint might see the horse lose much of the muscle tone and fitness required of an athlete. When the short duration of a Thoroughbred's racing career is taken into consideration, those months of healing and retraining can be extremely costly

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