talking tendons

In this video Emma interviews Kristin to discuss all about tendons. We talk about how tendon injury occurs, how do tendons heal and if and what we can do to help this. We touch on how we can safely rehab an injured tendon, whether or not electrotherapy like laser and shockwave can help and if there are any tendon rehab programs that any horse owner can implement for their own horse.

Watch our full chat below. 

Links to the research Kristin mentioned:

• Docking and Cook 2016 - Pathological tendons maintain sufficient aligned fibrillar structure on ultrasound tissue characterization (UTC).
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26059532/
• Comparison of superficial digital flexor tendon loading on asphalt and sand in horses at the walk and trot                                                                            https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259447097_Comparison_of_superficial_digital_flexor_tendon_loading_on_asphalt_and_sand_in_horses_at_the_walk_and_trot
• Laser and Shockwave - there are a ton of articles to go through on this! The problem with the research is that there is a lot of variation in protocols, study design, and sample size and this makes it difficult to assess their usefulness with complete confidence. You will find studies that suggest positive outcomes for anything really but you need to look at the quality of the research . One systematic review I found was only able to include 3 studies in it's analysis, which is just not enough for a systematic review! A lot of the research in horses is of low quality, they often lack control groups or have risk of bias, such as no blinding of the assessors. We're not saying that electrotherapy can't help, we're just saying we don't know for sure yet that they do exactly what they claim. In any case they should be an adjunct treatment, and always be used in conjunction with exercise and load management.