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Stephanie Caldwell said:

> Is there a difference in a bow and a tear? I was
> thinking that a bow is a strain where as a tear the
> fibers of the tendon are torn, but I don't remember
> clearly. Seems like a bow wouldn't need as much
> support as a tear.
Tendon injuries come in varying degrees of severity from mild strain to
complete sever.  And I suspect that lots of horses mildly strain their
tendons without any tearing and without anybody even noticing that they
did so; whereas completely severed tendons are extremely rare and would
require major surgery to repair, because a completely severed tendon
would have snapped up into the upper leg (I am not even sure it is
possible and it is unlikely that any horse would be even serviceably
sound afterwards so few people even would bother to try).  And the cause
of a completely severed tendon would have to include something sharp to
have actually CUT the tendon, since I have never heard of anybody over
stretching a tendon to the point where it actually breaks completely.

One can gauge the severity of a strain/tear by doing an ultrasound which
can tell you how long the tear is and what percentage of the fibers have
been interrupted. From my understanding a "bowed" tendon is one that is
sufficiently severe to have caused sufficient tearing of at least some
of the fibers causing them to bow out on the back of the leg.  And I
have seen ultrasounds of horses with torn fibers, but not enough of them
were torn for the tendon to actually bow out, part of the tendon just
has a bit of a spongy feel to it and in the intial stages there is a bit
of heat and maybe a little swelling.

Which brings me to this:

> When I got out my daytimer and looked at my records on
> Star's tendon tear she went unwrapped the first 10
> days or so because the swelling was so severe, then I
> started wrapping and booting her for support.
This is exactly the opposite of what _I_ would do.  In the early days of
a torn tendon I will use aggressive anti-inflamatories, lots of ice, and
lots of wrapping when it isn't iced....in order to minimize the
swelling, swelling left unwrapped and unattended just gets worse.  I
will take the wraps off as soon as the swelling has abated enough that
the wrapping is no longer necessary (since wraps do very little other
than to minimize swelling).  And if you catch it quickly enough and get
the ice and then the wrap on as soon after injury as possible, you can
keep the swelling from getting "so severe."  I will even wrap it in a
"gel cast" (assuming that the horse is going to be totally confined) for
the first few days.

If you haven't caught it quickly enough, so there already is some severe
swelling, the FIRST thing to do is to ice it as much as possible to get
as much of the swelling out of there...and THEN wrap it to keep the
swelling from coming back as much as possible.  Swelling left unchecked
can cause the injury to escalate such that minor tears can turn into
bows.  You can keep a torn tendon from bowing by wrapping it
immediately.

kat
Orange County, Calif.




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