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[RC] Tendon Injuries - k s swigartStephanie 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. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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