Ringbone Treatment Options

What is the best way to treat ringbone in horses?
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Q. What’s the best way to treat ringbone?


A. Ringbone is proliferation of bone around the pastern or coffin joint. It has often been classified as articular when the joint is involved, or nonarticular when it is outside the joint. It can, however, have both an articular and nonarticular component.

Ringbone can be a frustrating disease that is progressive, much like knee pain and back pain in people.

I don’t know that there’s an ultimate cure or prevention, if you will. My feeling is if we start treating some of these horses earlier when we have only slight to mild problems, we may be able to slow down the progression. Things like Surpass (a topical anti-inflammatory cream), shock wave therapy, treating the joint if the joint is actually involved—all of those things decrease inflammation and we have to assume will probably decrease the progression of the disease. Nobody has studied that specifically, but those would be the things, short-term, that I would probably do when a horse has a flare-up in that area

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Written by:

David D. Frisbie, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVS, ACVS-MR, is an associate professor of Equine Surgery Colorado State University’s Equine Orthopaedic Research Center and a partner in Equine Sports Medicine, LLC, specializing in orthopedics and sports medicine. Frisbie specializes in orthopedic research, intra-articular therapeutics, new methods of cartilage repair, equine lameness, orthopedic surgery and biologics for the treatment of musculoskeletal injuries, with an emphasis on stem cells.

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