Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation: What it Means for the Horse Owner

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

As with human medicine, veterinary medicine has many specialties. OSU’s Veterinary Medical Hospital is home to 27 board certified specialists in many areas including but not limited to cardiology, equine internal medicine, ophthalmology, anesthesiology, equine surgery, and sports medicine and rehabilitation. For the equine owner that means one thing—an entire team of highly qualified specialists is treating your horse!

The American College of Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation is a relatively young college coming to fruition about 10 years ago. Two of OSU’s equine specialists were among the first veterinarians to become board certified in this specialty—Drs. Todd Holbrook and Mike Schoonover.

“We had to have certain publications in sports medicine in horses, a certain number of years of experience,” explained Todd Holbrook, DVM, DACVIM (LA), DACVSMR, professor of equine internal medicine, June Jacobs Endowed Chair in Veterinary Medicine, and equine section chief. “They essentially evaluate your credential application and if approved, you take the examination.”

“Once they go through your credentials and determine you are eligible, you sit for the certifying exam,” echoed Mike Schoonover, DVM, MS, DACVS, DACVSMR, associate professor of equine surgery. “The certifying exam was somewhat difficult. Being a surgeon and dealing a lot with orthopedics, those type of things weren’t quite as difficult. Getting caught up on all of the current literature relating to the cardiopulmonary aspects of sports medicine was a little like going back to study hall.”

Both Holbrook and Schoonover trace their interest in sports medicine back to the beginning of their careers.

“After I completed my residency in internal medicine, I went into practice primarily focusing on sport horses,” stated Holbrook. “So my interest in sports medicine developed there along with an interest in endurance exercise. I have worked with endurance horses for more than two decades.”

“I have been working with performance horses since high school when I did a lot of western performance rodeo events,” said Schoonover. “In veterinary school, I decided I wanted to be an equine surgeon. Doing equine surgery I discovered there is a lot of lameness diagnosis and sports medicine, so the next step was to pursue certification in sports medicine.”

So what does all this mean for referring veterinarians and their clients?

“We can offer a whole horse evaluation,” said Schoonover. “We can do a pre-season sports medicine evaluation. A checkup, if you will, to see how the horse’s heart and lungs are functioning and how the horse looks from a soundness standpoint. When people think about equine sports medicine, they generally think of lameness. But there are a lot of other areas that can cause poor performance.”

“There are a lot of different body systems that have to perform at their highest level to really allow them to get their job done for their owners,” added Holbrook. “It could be lameness but it could also be cardiac or lung functions that limit performance. We can evaluate horses essentially from the ground level all the way through the organ systems that are all involved with athletic performance.”

Both specialists have had success working with performance horses.

“A horse was actually referred to us for a tie-back surgery, which is a surgery that treats a disease called laryngeal hemiplegia, commonly called a paralyzed flapper,” explained Schoonover. “We decided to evaluate that horse with a dynamic endoscope which allows us to exercise the horse with the scope or camera in the horse’s airway so we can see what’s happening to the airway in real time.”

Once this horse was exercising under saddle, Dr. Schoonover and his team could see what was really happening. They discovered that not one but both of the horse’s arytenoids or flappers were closing down, completely occluding the airway.

“The dynamic endoscope exam brought to light that this wasn’t a routine flapper problem that a normal tie-back surgery could solve,” continued Schoonover. “We put our minds together and, through some testing, diagnosed this horse as having EPM, which is a neurologic disease. The muscles that were holding those arytenoids open were dysfunctional. We treated the horse for EPM, the condition improved and the horse went on to perform. Had we not taken that extra diagnostic step and just done the initial surgery, we wouldn’t have helped that horse.”

“We had a dressage horse referred to us with a cardiac problem as well as some lameness issues,” recalled Holbrook. “He has a heart murmur that we continue to monitor for safety and health concerns every six months or so. It wasn’t limiting his performance. More than likely lameness issues were, so we addressed some issues in his back. Using injections and shock wave therapy, we treated some areas of his spine that were impinging along his thorax under the saddle area. He’s done well and he and his talented young rider have gone on to do quite well in different competitions across the U.S.”

“When it comes to rehabilitation, a lot of the techniques we use have been adopted from human medicine,” added Schoonover. “Thirty years ago when people had knee surgery, they were placed in a cast and immobilized. Today these patients are walking and undergoing rehabilitation the day after surgery. We try to apply those techniques to our veterinary patients as well and get the owner involved in the rehabilitation process.”

Horses are elite athletes. Lameness, respiratory problems or cardiac issues can all limit their performance.

“Look at the poor performing horse with an open mind,” advised Schoonover. “Evaluate all the avenues from the get go rather than jumping to conclusions. It can probably save time and money for the horse owner.”

“We have a great opportunity to collaborate with many board certified specialists here at OSU,” said Holbrook. “It’s important for horse owners to know about the specialists available to treat their horses. If they see or feel something that isn’t right, we can help them determine what the problem is and the best way to treat it.”

For more information on equine sports medicine and rehabilitation, contact our equine team at 405-744-7000, ext. 2.

MEDIA CONTACT: Taylor Bacon | Public Relations and Marketing Coordinator | 405-744-6728 | taylor.bacon@okstate.edu