About Navicular Syndrome In Horses

By Karina Frost


Every horse has an area known as the navicular region around their hooves in the anterior limbs. This area may sometimes be infected by the navicular syndrome which may not be categorized as a terminal illness but can really affect the functioning of the horse. When a horse gets this disease, it does not mean that it will be disabled, it can be cured and return back to normal. There are various methods that can be used to prevent and also to treat the infection.

In order to know if a horse has caught the illness, there are various things that are needed by the veterinary doctor. They usually look at the physical symptoms and also proof from a radiographic test. There are several x-ray examinations that are usually done on the horse because the physical symptoms may be brought about by many other things. This will avoid the giving of wrong medicines.

There are many physical signs that demonstrate the illness. The most common sign that will probably show is lameness mainly on the anterior limbs of the stallion. In some all feet are normally lame but others get the lameness only on one foot. When the lameness occurs, the horses will stagger during locomotion. Horses that are in their mid-ages are at a greater risk of catching the disease. This refers to those horses that are from 7 to 14 years of age.

Physical tests can also be carried out to detect the problem. One of them is making observations when the stallion is settling down. An infected horse will try hard to put more weight on the hind limbs by extending the front limbs too forward. The infected horses also show a common physical sign of having the front hooves being smaller than the hind ones this is because they have probably been subjected to less pressure since the infection kicked in.

The veterinary doctors can also make use of anesthetic medicines to detect if the horse has any problem. When the horses are subjected to the medicine they will cease ant abnormal behaviors because the medicine will stop them from feeling any pain in the affected areas.

There are various ways that the disease can be handled after it has been detected. One way is through correct shooing. This will help to stabilize the hooves from all sides making the horse more comfortable. There are also some medications that the horses can be given to widen the blood vessels in the affected area. However, many horses take long to react to these treatments.

The care giver can also subject the horse to some exercises to help in enhancing blood circulation. These exercise routines should be done every day of the week for about an hour. By increasing the circulation in the affected area, the horse will be able to apply more weight on the affected region.

However, there are some horses that rarely respond to any of the above methods of treatments. For horses that show no change whatsoever after all the things above have been done, the doctors may decide to do a surgical procedure on them. This procedure is usually done to remove all the unwanted tendons that basically cause the pain.




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