Michigan State University (MSU) has invested more than $400,000 in an innovative back-pain clinic for horses.
“Nobody has really focused on the back like this,” says Robert van Wessum, who heads up MSU’s McPhail Equine Back Pain Clinic. “Nobody, as far as I know, has all the tools together to do this in one facility.”
Van Wessum says specialists frequently have a difficult time diagnosing back pain in horses because the back is so complicated. Tissues, disks, joints, vertebrae and cartilage all need to be examined in order to diagnosis a problem.
“If you want to see what’s going on, you need to use quite a lot of technologies,” he says.
Van Wessum says at least 10 to 15 percent of equine lameness problems can be traced to problems in the back.
“If we did more research, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the percentage is actually higher,” he says. “People will often try to treat the lameness as a problem in the leg, when the problem is really in the back.”
Other performance issues, such as bucking, rearing, stiffness and a general resistance to work also can be signs of a back problem, even if there are no overt signs of lameness, he says.
In the last three years, van Wessum has worked with about 500 equine back pain cases at the MSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH) and reports that nearly all are now performing at their original level or higher. By opening a clinic at the VTH specifically devoted to this area, he hopes to bring this success to a wider audience.
Specialists form all over the country have visited MSU to check out the new facility.
Source: Robert van Wessum, MSU
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
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