A New Navicular Vantage

Technological advances such as MRI have given veterinarians a closer look at navicular syndrome.
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Technological advances such as MRI have given veterinarians a closer look at navicular syndrome.

The great thing about technological advances is that they provide new perpectives on old problems. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), for instance, has given equine veterinarians an improved vantage point for examining the underlying disease process in navicular syndrome cases. Historically, the term navicular syndrome referred to lameness resulting from pain in the podotrochlear apparatus in the back of the foot that includes the navicular bone, bursa (sac cushioning the navicular bone from the deep digital flexor tendon), supportive ligaments, and deep digital flexor tendon.

"Everybody used to think that navicular disease meant the problem related to degeneration in the bone and surrounding structures. That’s because on radiographs all we could see was the bone," explains Robert Schneider, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, professor and equine orthopedic surgeon at Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Veterinarians began recognizing, however, that this process involves more than just the navicular bone. The lameness that started out being called "navicular disease" was renamed "navicular syndrome" and later called "caudal heel syndrome."

"Even still, there were a variety of treatment failures and opinions about what and why things happen and how and why to treat this ‘syndrome,’ including various shoeing strategies," says Stuart Shoemaker, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, owner of Idaho Equine Hospital, in Nampa. "This indicated that there was little understanding about what was going on within the equine foot." The modality that revolutionized Shoemaker’s understanding of this foot lameness was MRI

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Written by:

Nancy S. Loving, DVM, owns Loving Equine Clinic in Boulder, Colorado, and has a special interest in managing the care of sport horses. Her book, All Horse Systems Go, is a comprehensive veterinary care and conditioning resource in full color that covers all facets of horse care. She has also authored the books Go the Distance as a resource for endurance horse owners, Conformation and Performance, and First Aid for Horse and Rider in addition to many veterinary articles for both horse owner and professional audiences.

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