Latest News

The pre-purchase examination

 THE PRE-PURCHASE EXAMINATION.

As veterinary surgeons this is often an examination that can be very hard to manage from the clients perspective and the vendor of a horse. The examination is a fact finding examination that is being made to see if a horse may have a pre-existing condition that could hinder the horse performing to the required level or discipline intended

.

We as a practice recommend the 5 stage examination for all horses. This is the examination recommended by Equine Veterinarians Australia. This involves examination at rest, thorough clinical examination, lameness examination in hand, examination during exercise and then after a cool down period. We have found this examination to be very useful as often a subtle issue will not appear until after the exercise period. Majority of horses are purchased for an athletic discipline so the exercise component of the examination is very useful to ensure that no lameness presents after exercise. How disappointed would you be if your horse was fine for the first class of the show but lame when taken out for the second class of the show later in the day?

There is still a perspective among horse owners that vets will pass or fail a horse. At Tweedie & Associates we avoid this term, as often different clients will have a different risk aversion. Some people may use the examination to help them identify issues that they will need to manage as the horse fulfills all other requirements, and example of this is an older horse that is being used as a school master. Equally someone may not want to take on a management case and may be risk averse to any issues. So we as vets can not pass or fail a horse, we merely present the information gathered during an examination and relay this to the client in the best way so they can make an informed decision. While examination of a young horse people will be unwilling to take any risk as the horse has not started their sport career.

Often we are asked what other tests should be included in the examination. The most common test requested are radiographs. These are important for all age of horses. A young horse may have had no work but an OCD lesion will be present that may not show up until the horse is in full work. We recently experienced this with a client who we helped manage the pre-purchase examination that was being done in another part of Australia. The horse was diagnosed with three OCD lesions with the horse displaying no signs of soreness, effusion of joint or pain on flexion tests. Ordering radiographs helped this client avoid a costly mistake.

In some instances radiographs of an older horse will show multiple issues, that it is very important to marry with the clinical examination. Older horses will have multiple changes on radiographs and we will then interpret these changes and try and advise of the significance of the changes, taking into account the future use of the horse.

There is a thinking also that 'clean' radiographs mean there are no issues with the horse. This is often not the case as radiographs are limited on their assessment of cartilage changes. The other area is interpreting changes on feet radiographs. Horses can have multiple issues with their feet but show no changes on radiographs. This has been seen due to the use of MRI imaging that is now available to us.So with radiographs alone we do feel they are of limited value, but with a combined thorough clinical examination can be a very helpful assessment of the horse for purchase.

The other issue is what do we radiograph, sometimes it is not financially viable to radiograph all joints. In this instance we will make recommendations based on historical injuries for your chosen discipline, for example, knee (carpus) problems are a major issue in the life of a racehorse, so we would recommend this area, while for some other disciplines the knee causes very few issues. While hock lameness can be a major cause of poor performance in the showjumper or dressage horse. We also will assess the back of a performance horse for issues, as back issues can cause lameness issues in the performance horse, while little primary back pain is seen in the racehorse.But equally sometimes we have seen issues present in uncommon areas.

Other tests to include would be endoscopic examination to assess laryngeal function, as for a lot of horses going to a high level in their discipline airway function is very important. Sometimes we are able to assess the noise a horse will make when we perform the exercise component of the examination.An endoscopic examination will allow us to make a more thorough assessment. We also record this with our video-endoscope for future reference.

The final takehome message about the pre-purchase examination is that they should be viewed as a fact finding examination, the information gained from this should then be used to make an informed decision about the suitability for intended use.