Hydrotherapy
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Hydrotherapy |
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How Does it Work? It has long been understood that cold water has an important part to play in the recovery of leg injuries in horses. Cold water hosing cools the skin but the temperature is uncontrolled and might not be cold enough to affect the structures most often involved with injury. Cold sea water in particular has an anti-inflammatory effect which facilitiate healing and helps guard against injury. Consequently over the last 150 years or so, inventors have been patenting various devices for replicating the benefits of exposure to cold sea water in a controlled manner. To full understand how the horse's body reacts to trauma please click here. Cold Water Equine Hydrotherapy Spas The application of cold water hydrotherapy triggers three basic reactions. At a cellular level, the metabolic response of the cells is reduced, so the cells need less oxygen to function and thereby suffer less hypoxic injury. Cold water therapy also decreases the permeability of the blood vessel walls, thus reducing the amount of fluid that accumulates in the injured area, thus the colds numbs the area to a certain degree, acting as a topical analgesic. Over the last 20 year major advances in the design of Equine spas have been made. This lead to a spa being donated to the University of Sydney to faciliate clinical trials and to establish an independent verdict on the benefits of cold water hydrotherapy. The trials were conducted by Associate Professor E R Hunt, MVXc, PhD, G Dip Ed (Tert) who had 30 years equine veterinary experience. The first trials were conducted during the winter and the results were very encouraging. However as winter turned to summer Professor Hunt found it difficult to replicate the early positive results. Only when they experimented with different water temperatures was it ascertained that the lower ambient winter temperatures had a major impact on the outcome. Once the optimum temperature of the water was know further trials established the optimum salination of the water,a s it was historically well documented that the salt in sea water had a significant anti-inflammatory effect. Having established the optimum conditions required to facilitate healing, clinical trials were conducted. Positive results were replicated across a whole range of leg injuries, from bowed tendons to suspensory ligament injury, inflammation of foreleg suspensory ligaments and chronic fetlock synovitis. One horse had had a chipped bone removed from the fetlock joint and another had a penetrating wound of the digital flexor tendon sheath. Subsequent treatment of a 65 horses showed that open wounds responded rapidly to treatment, hoof growth was stimulated, laminitis responded well and even navicular syndrome responded in 2 out of 3 cases. |
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