Ultrasound Exams for Diagnosing Roaring in Horses

Ultrasonography, along with endoscopy, can be a supplemental resource veterinarians can use to diagnose roaring.
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Perhaps your horse’s performance is lacking, or maybe he sounds like a freight train as he labors through work. He could be suffering from left recurrent laryngeal neuropathy, commonly known as roaring. But how can you get a diagnosis quickly and easily?

The results of a study carried out at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky., indicate that ultrasonography, in addition to traditional endoscopy methods, can be a supplemental resource for veterinarians to definitively diagnose roaring, one of the leading causes of poor performance in athletic horses.

In a roarer, the muscles that open and close the left side of the larynx as the horse breathes are atrophied, causing the arytenoid cartilage (which closes over the trachea when a horse swallows) to droop into the left side of the airway. This effectively blocks the flow of air into the lungs.

"Resting endoscopy (when an endoscope is passed through the standing horse’s nostrils into his throat to provide a view of the internal structures) is often used to evaluate the upper airway and arytenoid cartilages; however, it is not always accurate in predicting which horses will have impaired arytenoid function during exercise," explained Katherine Garrett, DVM, from the diagnostic imaging department at Rood & Riddle

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Written by:

Stacey Oke, MSc, DVM, is a practicing veterinarian and freelance medical writer and editor. She is interested in both large and small animals, as well as complementary and alternative medicine. Since 2005, she’s worked as a research consultant for nutritional supplement companies, assisted physicians and veterinarians in publishing research articles and textbooks, and written for a number of educational magazines and websites.

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