Page 136 - Speedhorse April 2019

“Rehab is a very big part of getting horses back successfully into their athletic career.”
After a foot or leg injury, the horse owner, veterinarian and farrier must work together
as a team to facilitate the most effective way to medically treat the injury, trim and shoe as needed, and rehabilitate that horse for optimum recovery. Careful rehabilitation therapy will often speed heal- ing and help ensure that the horse recovers more fully, returning to its former capability as an athlete.
Lane Easter, DVM, Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons, Founding Partner
& Surgeon at Performance Equine Associates in Thackerville, Oklahoma, has specialized in orthopedic surgery during his 25-year career as an equine veterinar- ian. “We manage one rehab facility owned by one of our clients and also own part of a public rehab facility called eCore North Texas, at Whitesboro, Texas,” he says.
“We are probably the principle equine rehab center in north central Texas. It was originally Selway Rehabilitation Center, owned by Daniel Vernay who was a pioneer in some of the human rehab therapies applied to horses,” says Easter.
“We have been using that facility for many years, rehabbing horses with orthopedic injuries since the late 1990’s. When I finished my surgery residency at Texas A&M, I stayed on as a faculty surgeon for a while. Texas A&M is a referral facility and horses go there for various orthopedic procedures. We’d do sur- gery and send them home and didn’t get to see them afterward on a routine basis,” he explains.
“We would get follow-up from their owners and referring veterinarians, but it’s not like seeing the horses with your own eyes. So, in 1998 I moved to north central Texas and founded Performance Equine Associates,” says Easter.
“It was an eye-opener, working with these horses and being able to do my own follow-ups after
orthopedic surgery. It’s not uncommon for me to
see a horse from foalhood through adulthood. I may work on a foal with crooked legs, or one that had a bad injury as a foal, then as a performance horse and finish out its life as a breeding stallion or broodmare, taking care of its orthopedic needs,” he says.
“Living with these horses on a day-to-day basis I got to see a lot of things I never appreciated before. As a distant referral surgeon, we would fix a problem and send the horse home for rest and rehab, and the horse goes back to work. Without personal contact and constant feedback, we often assumed things were fine. When I began to have closer contact with these patients, I found that these horses often struggled when re-enter- ing athletic use. Healing tissue is often accompanied by soreness from scar tissue and various other problems, and needs controlled rehabilitation,” he says.
In the late 1990’s, equine medicine was beginning to use regenerative therapies like IRAP, platelet-rich plasma, stem cells, etc., and veterinarians began to apply controlled rehabilitation techniques. “I was on the forefront using of some of this regenerative and rehabilitation therapy in horses. Trying to get those horses to respond, we learned a lot, and we followed human medicine, realizing that rehab is a very big part of getting those horses back successfully into their athletic career.”
Surgery and regenerative therapy can facilitate heal- ing to the point where the limb is structurally strong again, but often still painful when the horse goes
back to work, perhaps due to lack of elasticity in the changeover of different types of collagen fibers in joint capsules, tendons or ligaments. “This new tissue is not as stretchy as it once was, and more likely to be painful with work, or easily reinjured. You have to train those tissues back to what they should be. The original
REHAB AFTER INJURY
by Heather Smith Thomas
Heather Smith Thomas
134 SPEEDHORSE, April 2019
EQUINE HEALTH