Michigan State Vet School Opens New Clinic for Horses with Back Pain

Sport horse specialist Rob Van Wessum DVM will direct diagnosis and treatment at the new back pain clinic for horses at Michigan State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. (MSU photo)

In mid-June, Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine will officially open the McPhail Equine Back Pain Clinic to meet the needs of horses with problems in their spines and back muscles. The clinic has a unique combination of professional expertise and state-of-the-art technology that holds great promise for horses with back pain.

According to the clinic’s director, Dr. Rob van Wessum, at least ten to fifteen percent of equine lameness problems can be traced to problems in the back. “If we did more research, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the percentage is actually higher,” he says. “People will often try to treat the lameness as a problem in the leg, when the problem is really in the back.”

Other performance issues, such as bucking, rearing, stiffness, and a general resistance to work can also be signs of a back problem, even if there are no overt signs of lameness, he adds.

In the last three years, Van Wessum has worked with about 500 equine back pain cases at the MSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH) and reports that nearly all are now performing at their original level or higher. By opening a clinic at the VTH specifically devoted to this area, he hopes to bring this success to a wider audience.

Van Wessum himself is part of the formula for success. In addition to his 17 years of clinical expertise as a sport horse lameness clinician, he has experience as an internationally known rider, trainer, and judge in the sport of dressage.

Van Wessum uses several types of imaging to help pinpoint problems and treat them more accurately – fluoroscopy, Doppler ultrasound, bone scans, and (soon) MRI. Treatment is followed with a tailor-made rehabilitation program that is designed to increase the horse’s range of motion and speed gradually.

Client education is an essential part of the program.

“We show clients anatomical models and videos of how horses move and give thorough explanations during the clinical exam. If they understand why we are prescribing certain rehabilitation techniques they can, and do, become really committed partners in the rehabilitation process.”

He also will work with the client’s local veterinarian during the horse’s rehabilitation and will provide the vet with a video of the exam and all the information learned during the horse’s visit.

People are already bringing their horses from around the country to meet with van Wessum, and he makes it as easy for them as possible.

“We can help arrange transportation with a certified transporter and arrange hotel accommodations,” he says. “We do all the diagnosis and treatment in a reasonable amount of time, two or three days, so that clients don’t find it too hard to stay here with their horses.”

To schedule an appointment at the McPhail Equine Back Pain Clinic, contact the MSU Large Animal Hospital at (517) 353-9710.

Barbaro's Owners Endow Chair in Equine Medicine to Honor Dean Richardson

(via press release)

Roy and Gretchen Jackson Endow Chair for Equine Disease Research at Penn Veterinary Medicine School

(Feb. 13, 2007--PHILADELPHIA, PA) A $3-million gift from Roy and Gretchen Jackson, owners of Barbaro, will endow a chair in the name of Dean W. Richardson at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

In acknowledging the gift, Penn President Amy Gutmann said, “Gretchen and Roy Jackson have already done so much for veterinary medicine through their commitment to giving Barbaro every possible opportunity to recover from his catastrophic injuries. People throughout the world now understand that veterinary medicine –- and Penn veterinary medicine in particular –- shares in the advances that define today’s biomedical science. Now, with this generous gift, Gretchen and Roy Jackson not only promote continued progress, but they pay tribute to the doctor who, like them, gave his heart to a magnificent horse.”

“This endowed chair,” said Joan C. Hendricks, the Gilbert S. Kahn Dean of Veterinary Medicine, “is a strong recognition of the power of translating fundamental scientific advances into new real-world treatments. With a new faculty position dedicated to the study of equine disease, we will be better positioned to fight deadly conditions like laminitis.”

The endowed chair is the cornerstone of a major new Penn Vet initiative to fight laminitis, which afflicted Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro. Laminitis is a severe, painful condition in horses that can be fatal. The laminitis initiative will foster training programs and studies for new treatments of equine diseases.

“We are very pleased to make this commitment in support of the School of Veterinary Medicine’s research of equine diseases,” Gretchen Jackson said. “Our close relationship with Dr. Richardson over the last eight months persuaded us to name the chair in his honor. We are indeed grateful to him, and we especially look forward to a future without laminitis.”

Roy and Gretchen Jackson have a long and close connection with Penn and the School of Veterinary Medicine. Both are Penn graduates, and they have been dedicated supporters of Penn's athletic, medicine and veterinary programs for many years. In addition, Gretchen Jackson serves on the Penn Vet Board of Overseers.

“I am deeply honored by this generous and important gift,” said Richardson, chief of surgery at Penn’s George D. Widener Hospital and leader of the team that treated Barbaro. “The Jacksons’ remarkable philanthropy will translate into better outcomes for injured and ill horses in the future.”

Exclusive! Dr. Morrison Describes Barbaro's New Hoof Cast for Laminitis Therapy

Left: Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital's Scott Morrison DVM finishing tendon surgery on a laminitic horse.(Hoofcare & Lameness Journal file photo)

On Wednesday, January 3, Scott Morrison DVM of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky traveled to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania to create a temporary supportive foot cast for Barbaro, the champion 2006 three-year-old colt whose right hind leg shattered soon after the start of the Preakness Stakes last May.

Barbaro has been a patient at the University of Pennsylvania's Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the university's rural vet school campus called New Bolton Center for more than six months. In July and August, after surviving several surgeries to repair his broken leg, the colt fought the painful mechanical form of laminitis in his "good" hind leg.

Known as "support-limb laminitis," this poorly-understood and often-deadly complication of fracture repair in horses can result in necrosis (death) of the fiber-like bed of tissue ("lamina") that bonds the hoof capsule to the bone. Unlike normal laminitis, which most often affects both front feet or all four feet, support-limb laminitis affects only the "good" leg that is overloaded when a horse favors one injured limb.

Barbaro was left with one broken leg and one hoofless one, but he struggled to survive. The damage to his laminitic foot, and the slow growth of new tissue, continues to be a grave concern of his caregivers.

Laminitis is the devastating disease that ended the lives of great racehorses like Secretariat and Sunday Silence, the Standardbred champion Nihilator, and more recently, the two great European champion dressage mares, Annastasia and Poetin.

Morrison, who heads Rood and Riddle's innovative podiatry clinic, was sought as a consultant to assist with the foundered (a common term for a foot that has been ravaged by the disease of laminitis) foot. He first saw the horse on December 20 for an evaluation, then returned on Wednesday to try to help stabilize the foot.

On Friday, January 5, Dr. Morrison told me that the cast was applied, "because the foot is so unstable. He's just not growing enough wall on the medial (inner) side, and he's bearing most of his weight on the arthrodesis (surgically-fused) leg."

Morrison padded the bottom of the foot with thick felt soaked in Betadine (iodine solution); the hoof wall was padded with Goretex fabric padding which was then covered with 3M casting tape. The cast extends up over the pastern area to just below the fetlock, according to Dr. Morrison.

"He lands on his toe when he walks," Morrison commented, "and that needed to be addressed. I had asked them to take radiographs before I got there, and they showed demineralization (thinning or actual deterioration) of the coffin bone (pyramid-shaped bone in the base of the foot, encased by hoof capsule) at the toe and on the medial (inside) wing.

"I attached a big aluminum bar shoe to the bottom of the cast to help with derotation, to try to get that coffin bone more parallel to the ground."

Morrison observed that the horse was uncomfortable at first with the change in footwear, but that surgeon Dean Richardson reported the horse was more comfortable with it the next morning.

An ancillary purpose of the cast is to stabilize the foot in the event that the horse needs to be moved out of his intensive care unit home at New Bolton Center. Speculation is that the horse will be moved to an as-yet unnamed farm, possibly in central Kentucky, to continue treatment in a more active setting. No date has been announced for his discharge from New Bolton.

Dr. Morrison is the founder and head of the podiatry clinic at Rood and Riddle; his unit is the largest hoof-specialist clinic in the world. The clinic currently employs four foot-specialist veterinarians and five lameness-specialist farriers, as well as a staff of technicians and administrative support staff. Morrison is a specialist in laminitis and consults on cases all over the world. He is a faculty member for the upcoming 4th International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot, to be held in West Palm Beach, Florida in early November 2007.

In his role as a contributing editor to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal, Dr. Morrison recently published an article chronicling his successful transplant of frog tissue on the bottom of an injured foot via the punch biopsy tool method; he was able to create a germinating bed of new frog tissue in a damaged area.

Ironically, he is probably most renowned for an unforgettable article detailing his successful deliberate implantation of sterile maggots in the foot to aid in the debridement of infected hoof tissue. That article can be downloaded as a pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file at http://www.hoofcare.com. No word yet if there are maggots in Barbaro's future.

© 2006-2007 THE JURGA REPORT: Horse Health Headlines. All rights reserved.

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Barbaro Struts His Stuff on ABC's Good Morning America; Next Stop Kentucky Horse Park?

Fans of injured racehorse Barbaro had a special treat this morning, when ABC's "Good Morning America" aired almost five minutes dedicated to the horse and his cautiously optimistic recovery from a shattered lower right hind leg and subsequent severe "support-limb" laminitis in the left hind.

Not only did they see the horse, they saw him without wraps on his legs and without any blankets. Yes, you can count his ribs. Yes, his fractured leg is bowed and unnatural looking. But, like the true champion he is, Barbaro walked along beside surgeon Dean Richardson just to show the world that he could.

Like most hind-limb injury cases, Barbaro exhibits what looks like almost a stringhalt gait behind. Commonly, these horses are reticent to break over on the foundered foot and so lift the foot and then flex the lower leg to move forward. But he did move forward, at a good clip.

The public waited exactly three months to see photos of Barbaro; the last images released by the University of Pennsylvania of their vet school's star patient were posted on 19 September.



Barbaro's demonstration of his prowess for the ABC camera crew followed a consultation on Tuesday with Scott Morrison DVM, head of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital's special podiatry clinic in Lexington, Kentucky.

In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, owner Gretchen Jackson hinted that the horse may be moved to Kentucky in the next ten days, or in January. Obviously buoyed by the horse's chipper attitude and removal of a catheter from his neck, the horse's connections are joking about his possible ability to breed mares in the future.

Meanwhile, Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader contained a story today quoting Kentucky Horse Park executive director John Nicholson, who said yesterday,"We would be honored to welcome him into the Horse Park family.

However, Nicholson contends that he has not spoken directly with the Jacksons.

"We don't think it's appropriate for us to aggressively solicit the horse until his owners and his medical team feel that he's comfortable and stable," Nicholson said in the Herald-Leader.

Recurrent laminitis, or an onset of laminitis in other limbs is still a serious risk for Barbaro, and anything can happen to dash hopes.

In the footage, Barbaro appears to be wearing a Sigafoos glue-on cuff with support shoe on his fractured leg; his hoofless foundered foot is wrapped in a bandage inside a padded Soft Ride hoof boot.

The video footage is available on the Good Morning America web site; Adobe Flash 8 viewer is required, but can be downloaded. ABC News now has an entire page of links to its video and text coverage of Barbaro's injury and career.

The video and text files can be found on the ABC News site by typing "Barbaro" in the search box at the top right of any screen. Look for stories and videos dated December 21 to view today's video and story.

If you need to type a direct url, type the following text into your browser address window:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2742921

Photo captions: (top) University of Pennsylvania supplied image by Kathy Freeborn; Rood and Riddle image of veterinarian Scott Morrison taken by Haydn Price, courtesy of www.hoofcare.com.

Barbaro's Foot Doc: Morrison to Examine Colt's Foundered Foot Today

Scott Morrison DVM of in Lexington, Kentucky is headed to the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania today; he will be examining Barbaro's left hind foot, which was devastated by an attack of support limb laminitis this summer.

Dr. Morrison is the founder and head of the Podiatry Clinic at Rood and Riddle; his unit is the largest foot-specialty clinic in the world. The clinic currently employs four foot-specialist veterinarians and four lameness-specialist farriers, as well as a staff of technicians and administrative support staff. Morrison is a specialist in laminitis and founder and consults on cases all over the world.

It is not known at this time whether Morrison will be merely evaluating the damage to the colt's foot to provide a prognosis, or if he will actually treat the horse or act as a consultant.

Barbaro is still a patient at New Bolton Center but is expected to be moved to another facility this winter, according to interviews with owner Gretchen Jackson and with his attending veterinarian Kathy Anderson DVM of Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland. The horse has been at New Bolton Center since shattering his right hind leg during the running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Racetrack in Baltimore, Maryland in May 2006.

Links to news media stories about Barbaro's meeting with Morrison:

Baltimore Sun article about Morrison's appointment with Barbaro (19 December 2006)

Daily Racing Form article about Morrison and Barbaro (19 December 2006--Free registration may be necessary to view this article)

Thoroughbred Times article about Morrison's plan to see barbaro published 16 december>

Captions: Scott Morrison DVM outside the podiatry clinic at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky (Haydn Price photo/�www.hoofcare.com); Scott Morrison checking feet of a laminitis case at Rood and Riddle (provided by Scott Morrison/courtesy �www.hoofcare.com).