ridecamp@endurance.net: Re: broken sesamoid

Re: broken sesamoid

Bruce Saul (kitten@scoraz.resp-sci.arizona.edu)
Thu, 25 Sep 97 00:34:24 MST

I had been reading and occassionally commenting, mostly on
conformation, on the endurance list for while and had been considering
beginning competitive trail riding when the beautiful mare that I own
that I had wanted to use for endurance riding broke her leg. She did
it in a particularly spectacular and bad way, she was turned out and
blasting around in our pasture when she stepped in a gopher hole. The
long pastern bone in her left foreleg was shattered into 40 or 50
different pieces, it was comminuted, which means that much of the middle
was powder. You can't imagine how heart-wrenching it is to hear your vet
say that the break is bad enough that we could put her down if we wanted to.
But he also said that she had an outside chance if we wanted to give her
that chance. We put her in a cast and then consulting with veterinary
orthopedists, ultimately we sent her to Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center
in Los Olivos, CA where Dr. Doug Herthel put a titanium rod in her leg,
through the cannon bone, through the shattered long pastern bone, and into
the short pastern bone, in essence fixing the fetlock and pastern joints
into one position forever. This technique by the way is new and has only
been done with this particular injury on 10 other horses, all mares, my mare
was the 11th.
I was devastated by her injury, she was so promising not only for
endurance (as a Canadian endurance rider who rode her not two months before
her injury can attest to), but also for dressage where she had Grand Prix
potential, jumping where she had the form they look for in a champion
pony hunter, and in cutting where her natural desire to cut and cow sense
and her powerful hindquarters made several cutting people ask to train her.
But she wouldn't give up, she was so strong -- you can't imagine. A
devastating injury like this and she travelled to California for surgery,
and got off the van in good enough shape to go into surgery less than an hour
later. Immediately after surgery -- she woke up from anesthesia fast --
she walked on her pinned and cast leg, the vets there commented on it.
After she came home many weeks later she was bucking around in her pen,
kicking up her heels and having fun. It has been three months since her
injury she has moments where she kicks up her heels and canters just because
she feels good! She is still healing, she will always limp though not from
pain, from the mechanics of having a fixed joint, but despite the pain and
trauma of her injury, despite a bout of enteritis which could have killed
her (I won't go into the details), she has survived and is doing well.
Her prognosis is that she will be pasture sound, she MAY be ridable
for light riding, she will be pain free, and her leg once healed will be
stronger than it was originally not just because of the titanium rod but
also because of the extra bone tissue that will be layed down there from
the bone healing process. Her strength she will pass on to her offspring.
The moral of this story is that if your horse is injured it is a
tragedy but the joy you will experience on watching that horse heal is so
wonderful that you may stop feeling sorry for yourself and feel joy for
your horse that he can walk again, and trot, and move freely enjoying
himself. Sure he may not be able to be an endurance horse again, but
as a horse he wasn't very concerned with that anyway, what he wants to
do is run and play and have fun and enjoy himself (and eat :-), and if you
love your horse that's what's really important afterall. Ride him and
enjoy him, he may surprise you.
If anyone has a horse with a fracture I highly recommend that they
send the xrays to Dr. Herthel for a consultation, the repairs that they
are doing now are remarkable, expensive but remarkable. My mare's injury
would have been a death sentence not two years ago, the best she could have
expected was a 30% chance to live and lifetime discomfort from arthritis.
Horses with her injury now have a 90% chance of recovery to pasture soundness
without discomfort, 20% of those horses are sound for light riding.
They are repairing mid-cannon bone fractures completely, so that the horse
can go out and do whatever it was doing before the injury! All kinds of
injuries are now being repaired that weren't before, and they have discovered
that judicious use of compression screws can make the difference between
a fracture that heals to the point of being ok, and one that heals to
the point of being stronger than before. It's amazing.

Tracy and everybody

Misty Mountain Arabian Sport Horses
11580 E. St. James Rd.
Tucson, AZ

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