Lameness

At Chastain Equine Medicine we offer a complete and comprehensive lameness diagnostic service that provides advanced and state-of-the-art care for the equine athlete. Dr. Chastain has extensive training and expertise in evaluating lameness in horses under a wide variety of disciplines within the equine industry.

With a wide variety of diagnostic imaging modalities readily available, including digital radiography and digital ultrasound diagnosing the source of the lameness can often be completed during the time of your appointment. In addition, Dr. Chastain is the only Veterinarian in a 280 mile radius to have the Lameness Locator by Equinosis in use. Lameness Locator® by Equinosis® is the culmination of almost 20 years of research on gait analysis at the University of Missouri’s Colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Engineering with the support of the E. Paige Laurie Endowed Program in Equine Lameness. Lameness Locator® objectively detects and quantifies body movement asymmetry in a horse using small, wireless, body-mounted inertial sensors and a hand-held tablet PC.

Instrumentation of the horse is quick, easy, and completely non-invasive. Data collection is in real time and veterinarians are free to perform their usual lameness evaluation routine without distraction. Dr. Chastain combines the Lameness Locator data with the visual assessment of the horse in hand, under tack, and during the dynamic flexion tests performed as part of the Lameness evaluation.

The Lameness Locator® is a system that enables a veterinarian to objectively identify lameness in horses. The system provides an analysis that indicates whether the horse is lame, an amplitude of the severity of the lameness, the limb or limbs involved, and the part of the motion cycle at which peak pain is occurring (impact, mid-stance, or push off).

Lameness Locator® by Equinosis™

The level of performance required today to stay at the pinnacle of your disciple requires an equine athlete that is at the top of their game. Soundness issues can lead to poor performance, and being able to recognize those issues becomes critical to the success of the athlete.

The challenge in diagnosis comes when your horse is not visibly “off” enough to adequately isolate a problem, but is “off” enough to reduce their performance.

Lameness Locator® by Equinosis™ is an inertial sensor-based motion analysis system developed at the University of Missouri as a diagnostic aid to practicing equine veterinarians for evaluation of lameness in horses. The system objectively detects and quantifies body movement asymmetry in a horse using three small, wireless inertial sensors and a hand-held tablet PC with proprietary algorithms developed specifically for measuring lameness. The setup is quick, easy and non-invasive. Data is transmitted wirelessly in real time and analyzed in seconds for immediate feedback. Information provided indicates the affected limb or limbs, the severity of lameness, and the timing of peak pain within the stride cycle (i.e. impact or push off).

This diagnostic tool becomes essential in many ways for your performance horse by enhancing the awareness of:

• Multiple limb lameness – sore in the front and/or hind?
• Follow up progress and rehabilitation from injury – is he getting better?
• Confirmation with nerve or joint blocks during the exam
• Follow up after treatment – did the treatment help?
• By utilizing both the subjective viewpoint of the doctor and the objective analysis of the computer, we can provide you and your horse with the best care regarding their soundness

The inertial sensors used in Lameness Locator® sample motion at a much higher frequency than the human eye (some 10 times faster), providing a very sensitive tool for identifying mild lameness, and identifying multiple limb lameness that can often complicate an evaluation. For more information visit www.equinosis.com.