Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The most common reason for a horse owner to seek veterinary care for their horse is related to the musculoskeletal system. Assessment of the horse's movement pattern is essential in the equine veterinary work. How uniformly veterinarians evaluate the lame horse may have both diagnostic and prognostic significance, such as follow up examination by the same or different veterinarian. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether there are between-veterinarian differences in assessing lameness in the same horse. In total 12 veterinarians evaluated 80 video sequences of 4 horses with induced lameness and made an evaluation of the affected limb as well as the degree of lameness. The results of this study show that the overall consensus among the veterinarians as a group is acceptable but at the individual level the variation is substantial. The result is supported by previous studies. The conclusion of this study is that it is important that a lame horse is examined by the same veterinarian when treatment is evaluated as it was when it first appeared with the problem. Evidently it is of great value to develop ways to objectively measure asymmetry of the movements of the horse.