VETERINARY PHYSIOTHERAPY TREATMENTS
Veterinary Physiotherapy is the application of manual therapies, electrotherapies and remedial exercise program prescriptions to enhance the natural healing processes.
Veterinary Physiotherapy at Kirk Equine Performance
Animals show pain and discomfort in many different ways; prey animals such as horses also try and cover it up to reduce their exposure as targets to predators (historically). It is a highly-trained skill to determine:
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If there is pain or discomfort affecting your horse?
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Where that pain or discomfort is?
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What can be done to alleviate this and aid return to full health and comfort?
What to expect from your appointment?
The investigation to determine the answer to these questions is extensive, involving assessment of your horse's previous medical history, as well as behavioural, observational and physical presentation of your horse.
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Physical assessment: ​
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Static assessment: Conformation and posture analysed when the horse is standing. This includes assessment of hoof balance and body condition scores.
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Dynamic assessment: Watching your horse move in walk and trot, potentially on the lunge and under saddle depending on the nature of the complaint.
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Palpation: Feeling muscles, bony landmarks and soft tissues of your horse from head-to-toe. Compensation may be hard to pin-point dynamically, but an effective manual assessment can highlight areas of pain and tension that are either directly or indirectly involved in the reason for referral.
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Physical treatment:
This will vary by case, however a range of manual and electrotherapies can generally be expected. These aim to target muscle tension, pain, dysfunction and muscular inactivity.
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Home exercise programme prescription:
In order to capitalise on the treatments made during the appointment, and to create a plan moving forwards. These exercises are able to accomodate horses in very early stages of rehabilitation where basic Range of Motion exercises are appropriate, or further down the line where more demanding core strength exercises target strength, conditioning and performance improvement.
What are Electrotherapies?
Electrotherapies include the machines available to Physiotherapists to target healing in more focussed ways than what our hands alone are capable of. There are several different machines and ways they function that provide this therapy. The following are the examples we have available at Kirk Equine Performance.
LASER Therapy
LASER works by using light energy to increase the activity in the engine of the cell: the mitochondria. These are an "organelle" of cells (cell's version of an organ!), and are responsible for respiration; which produces the energy used all over ours and our horses’ bodies. When an injury is present, chemicals create bonds within mitochondria which build up, stopping these mitochondria from doing their job efficiently. LASER helps to break down these bonds and the toxic build-up, which provides beneficial results:
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Pain relief
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Reduction of swelling
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Blood vessel growth
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Improved chemical composition of that area.
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LASER is an effective treatment for trigger points (muscle knots), joint pain, swelling and areas of tension that are too painful to attempt other modalities. This provides a non-invasive and well-accepted method of addressing pain in your horse, making it a vital tool. This has shown reduced requirement for painkillers, which may allow vets to reduce pain relief prescriptions; meaning that your horses’ livers and kidneys will also be VERY grateful!
H-Wave: Muscle stimulation
This is a muscle stimulation machine which is incredibly useful and effective at triggering coordination and maintaining muscle function. Pain has potent abilities to alter the contraction ability of muscles. Compensations, new or old, can start to affect a lifetime of muscle function.
Horses may go a long time before we really notice that something is not quite right for them. That means, they may have spent a long time compensating, clenching their backs or bracing to avoid putting weight on a sore leg. As a result, muscles will lock up the painful area and brace the body against using it. The muscle contraction messages could then change, and the muscle function could deteriorate as a result. This increases the risk of secondary problems as the body tries to respond to altered posture due to pain, increasing potential risk of injury elsewhere.
H-wave can effectively re-stimulate the correct muscle sequence (with correct handling of it), without fatiguing the muscle. The H-wave mimics the natural waveform that the body uses to contract a muscle; meaning it is generally well tolerated as well as effective. The other huge benefit to this machine is that it is capable of contracting the whole muscleas the electrodes are positioned on the muscle motor point, which is where all the nerve fibres enter a muscle and therefore where any contraction starts.
This manual treatment affects interstitial pressure and fluid concentrations of the muscles, physically initiating changes. Muscles in pain are likely to have a toxic environment. Massage physically increases blood-flow to and from treated areas, and encourages lymph drainage. This provides pain relief, which allows muscles to return to normal function, and so improves muscle tone, increases muscle extensibility and flexibility and manually reduces fascial restrictions and tethering. ​
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This is a vital tool as it provides us as practitioners with valuable information about your horse. We can feel the condition of the tissues being treated, as well as take note of your horse's response which will indicate their pain levels and demonstrate to us how best we should proceed. Your patience and confidence in our feeling at this stage is crucial for the long-term success of our partnership and ultimately your horse's comfort. ​
Stretching exercises increase the strength, flexibility and extensibility of the targeted muscles. This encourages healthy and potentially increased joint Range of Motion. It aids reducing fascial tethering, and restrictions, aids and prevents fibrosis and increases muscle coordination. Overall physically and biochemically improving the body's ability to strengthen.
The Remedial exercise program stages are often the latter stages of the program. This starts when we are sure that your horse's pain and comfort are under control and they are ready to begin muscle activation and strengthening. A huge variety of exercises are available to choose from for this part of the treatment. Often this depends on your availability as an owner - not all of us can spare hours to walk over endless poles with our horses!
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Generally, the options used target:
- Joint Range of Motion
- Muscle Range of contraction and relaxation
- Muscle strengthening
- Bone conditioning - crucial following box rest
- Controlled exercise following box-rest/restricted turnout and exercise
- Ligament and tendon conditioning
- Proprioception (coordination) training and development
- Biomechanics re-education
- Gait improvement
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