Cryotherapy can be a very valuable complementary tool for pain relief in horses with laminitis.
In the face of a life-threatening outbreak of laminitis, horses require aggressive pain management. In addition to traditional pharmaceuticals, cryotherapy can help relieve pain, but only if specific temperatures are reached. Unlike humans, horses can tolerate the prolonged cooling of their limbs.
Recently it has been studied what temperature should be reached to benefit from the pain relief provided by cooling. In the study, healthy horses without laminitis had a forelimb immersed in a cold bath up to the accessory carpal bone. The water temperature was slowly lowered from 34 ° C to 1 ° C. At specific times in the study, skin temperatures and reactions to a stimulus were recorded along the cane bone. The response of each horse to the stimulus was determined using a device that pressed a small 1 mm blunt pin on the horse's skin with increasing force until a reaction was observed. Reactions included lifting the foot, flexing the muscles of the tested limb, or moving the weight of the body away from the stimulus.
Skin and water temperature
“The study revealed that the horses were significantly less reactive to the stimulus once the skin temperature dropped below 7 ° C. However, to achieve a skin temperature of 7 ° C, the water temperature had to be 2 ° C, ”explains Peter Huntington, BVSc., MACVSc., Director of Nutrition for Kentucky Equine Research. Therefore, cryotherapy may prove to be a valuable and much-needed complementary pain relief modality for laminitis horses. “Many pharmaceutical drugs are used today to treat horses with laminitis, but not all of these drugs provide adequate pain relief for all patients. Also, some medications have significant side effects that must be considered on an individual basis, ”Huntington said. A variety of nutritional, physical, and endocrine factors can trigger inflammation and pain in this area, and that pain must be addressed quickly for a positive outcome.
Exploring Cryotherapy for Laminitic Horses. Kentucky Equine Research Staff
*Rainger, J.E., S. Wardius, C. E. Medina-Torres, S.M. Dempsey, N. Perkins, and A.W. van Eps. 2021. The effect of regional hypothermia on mechanical nociceptive thresholds in the equine distal forelimb. Veterinary Journal 269:105607. DOI: 10.1016/j.tvjl.2021.105607
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