Potentially VERY exciting...

Lots of you have followed the ups and downs as I've tried (with lots of help from others, especially vets Peter Clegg and Jeremy Hyde) to put together some solid research into the rehab we do here.

Of course, Project Dexter, which records the results from horses with navicular and DDFT-type diagnoses, is ongoing and I will continue to add to that (**we are at 50 horses, by the way - surely that's a milestone, and I reckon there will be a big Project Dexter blog before too long!!!**).

HOWEVER, this is something different - and it has great potential - though I won't know till next week if its really going to work...

To give you a bit of background, there are 2 ways of assessing damage to tendons and ligaments (ie the stuff which won't show up on x-ray) - either ultrasound or MRI.  

MRI is fantastic, incredibly detailed (images above courtesy of Hallmarq) and extremely expensive (it runs at £1000-1800 currently); it can also only be done at specific veterinary centres which have the right facilities.

Ultrasound is much cheaper and is portable - most veterinary practices have ultrasound machines which can be transported in the back of a car. Its often used to scan leg injuries but its much more difficult to get images of damage within the hoof capsule. Although I've heard eminent French vet Prof Jean-Marie Denoix describe obtaining ultround images of the DDFT within the hoof till now I've not come across a vet in England who thought it was do-able.

But step in Anna Ehrle, a fantastic German vet who joined our local practice last year. She's been to Rockley a couple of times and I've been extremely impressed with her but it was only in the last few weeks that I discovered she was a bit of an ultrasound specialist.

When she was last up here I asked her about scanning within the hoof and she was confident that we could get images of the DDFT and navicular bursa and that damage would show up provided it wasn't too deep. I mulled it over and realised that ultrasound would give me a way of looking at DDFT damage before and after rehab, and although it wouldn't be cheap, it would be a hell of a lot more practical than repeat MRIs.

It seemed mad not to give it a try so, after talking to M, Dali and Eva's owners, next week we are taking the plunge and Anna will come up here and scan all 3 horses. The advantage is that we already have MRI for Eva and Dali, which will give us a control for what we are looking for in the DDFT. Even better, Dali and M have been here only a short time, so if the scans are useful we can re-scan them at the end of their rehab.

I'll let you know next week what the scans are showing us, but I have high hopes - keep everything crossed...  :-)