BTB: Stifled! Does your horse have a bum knee?

Stifled! Does your horse have a bum knee?

Posted: 13 May 2010 01:27 PM PDT

Stifles. They're the horse equivalent of the human knee and about as complex. I wrote about stifles last year, so I guess this is part II. Since then I found this great intro to stifles: Diagnosis and management of acute stifle injury in adult horses in In Practice September 2008. It's thorough and easy to understand. The picture on the left was borrowed from the article.

Here are a few stifle facts from other resources...

The menisci are disks that lie between joints in the stifle. Meniscal tears of the stifle heal very slowly because they have even less blood supply than other tendons/ligaments.
Some horses with stiﬂe pain tend to stand with the stiﬂe rotated out
Mild lameness is usually accentuated by ridden exercise, especially when the rider sits on the diagonal of the lame limb.
Most humans tear or rupture the cruciate ligaments. This particular injury is rare in horses, which are much more likely to tear or injure the meniscal structures in the joint.

The equine stifle, like the human knee, is pretty critical to athletic pursuits of any kind. Although new therapies are showing promise, stifle injuries can be tough to treat. Generally, a significant stifle injury is bad news.