Juvenile Bowed Tendons and Racing Prognosis

?Juvenile bowed tendons, or ?baby bows,? are not uncommon in yearlings and weanlings,? said Johanna Reimer, VMD, Dipl. ACVIM, Dipl. ACVC (cardiology), of the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky., at the 2002 American Association of

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“Juvenile bowed tendons, or ‘baby bows,’ are not uncommon in yearlings and weanlings,” said Johanna Reimer, VMD, Dipl. ACVIM, Dipl. ACVC (cardiology), of the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky., at the 2002 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention. In her presentation “Enlarged Superficial Digital Flexor Tendons in Immature Thoroughbred Horses: Prognosis for Racing,” she discussed her seven-year field study of Thoroughbred yearlings with visually enlarged superficial digital flexor tendons. Her goal was to define the prognosis for racing for immature, untrained Thoroughbreds with this problem.


These horses were presented for examination with enlargement of one or both forelimb superficial digital flexor tendons, generally with a homogenous (uniform) appearance on ultrasound examination. Reimer calculated the cross-sectional area of each tendon at its widest part, and selected horses with a cross-sectional area of 1.7 cm2 or greater in either or both forelimbs for the study. (She noted that a cross-sectional area of 0.8-0.9 cm2 is generally normal for a superficial digital flexor tendon in these young Thoroughbreds.) The distribution of enlarged superficial digital flexor tendons between right, left, and both forelimbs was fairly even.


For a control group to compare with the study group, she took the race records of the selected horses’ maternal siblings from The Jockey Club Information System. The likelihood of racing, age at first start, and earnings were evaluated for both groups.


There was no significant difference in likelihood of racing at all or racing at two, three, or four years of age compared to the control group. There was also no difference in average earnings per start between the two groups

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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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