Kylie's Nuclear Scan Results

Wow, my head is spinning, I just got the results back for Kylie's nuk scan....and it wasn't what I wanted to hear. I know competition horses, especially ones that jump, are prone to injury (big body and stick legs are a bad combination), but geez. Dr. Greenman said her withers, lumbar, back, stifle, and hocks were fine, HOWEVER, there is alot going on in her left hind (direct opposite leg of her initial injury in the right front). The areas of concern are Kylie's sacroiliac joint (The sacroiliac area is where the pelvis attaches to the spine at the lower back), left hind high suspensory, left hind fetlock/ankle. She needs to do more diagnostics to determine (x-rays and ultrasounds) exactly what is going on in those areas. I am glad that I did the nuclear scintigraphy, because the first vet had no idea where the problem was...neck, back, stifles were her guesses, and then she suggested to inject her hocks. The legs were not even an initial area of concern. Dr. Greenman did an fantastic job fixing up her front leg, I have confidence she is the best vet for Kylie.

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Kylie goes for a nuclear scan

Today my horse Kylie's is going over to Santa Anita's Nuclear Imaging Facility for a nuclear scan. She has had a sore back for a couple of weeks now, and the vet couldn't pin point where the problem was (back, neck, stifles, hocks...). Luckily she is sound for flexions, so I'm glad it's not a leg injury this time. I'm not about to try the process of elimination - injecting different parts until the soreness went away. Sounds ridiculous, but that is not an uncommon practice there. A friend of mine spent $10,000 until they finally got to the neck which solved the problem. Nope, I'm not doing that!

When you hurt yourself, you can describe your symptoms to your doctor. A horse, however, must depend on its handlers to find the problem. If the animal is visibly lame in one leg and shows heat and swelling somewhere in the lower leg, a trainer or vet can usually find and take care of it easily. But when an injury occurs higher up a horse's skeleton, especially in the shoulder or the pelvis, it may be impossible to detect with anything but a nuclear scan. Nuclear scanning-also called nuclear scintigraphy-can catch problems earlier than X-rays. It can also find them in parts of the body that are difficult to X-ray.

A nuclear scan works by using a gamma camera to take a photograph of a horse's bone. It will show a "hot spot," or an increased area of activity, where there is a problem. It does this because a horse's body responds to bone damage by sending calcium and phosphorous to the site in order to repair it. With a nuclear scan, a radioactive technetium is bound to phosphorous and injected into the horse's bloodstream. The phosphorous goes to the injured site, taking the technetium with it. Then the gamma camera picks up the technetium, and the veterinarian can see the precise location of the problem. Technology sometimes amazes me!

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