KISSING SPINE IN HORSES

• The signs of back pain in a horse can be wide ranging, and unfortunately for the horse they are often ignored.
• A horse that steps away when approached with the saddle, swishes its tail, is ‘girthy’ or exhibits other signs of reluctance or sourness prior to riding, is almost certainly anticipating back pain. 
• When being ridden, poor performance, loss of movement, resistance, and behaviours such as ‘humping’, pigrooting, laying back the ears, etc, are further signs.
• Attempting to ‘ride the horse through’such resistances may lead to explosive behaviours like bucking and rearing as the horse attempts to rid itself of its perceived primary cause of discomfort – the rider.

Signs

• Horses with kissing spine pain tend to tighten and tense their backs under the weight of the rider. This results in a hard, stiff back that has little ability to side-bend.
• Thus performance deteriorates, and the horse feels uncomfortable to ride.
• Saddle fit is affected detrimentally, increasing the likelihood of back pain becoming worse.
• The pain from the kissing spinesis concentrated in the midline of the back, under the saddle, with the saddle seat area being most commonly affected.
• If the painful structures are jarred suddenly by a rider landing heavily on the horse’s back, or by the horse tripping, it may suddenly go into a fit of bucking or pigrooting.

Diagnosis

• Veterinary diagnosis of kissing spines generally starts with Palpation, followed by confirmation with a number of tests.
• Local anaesthetic is injected in between the tips of the vertebrae suspected of painfully kissing, to see if the signs of soreness are eliminated by this test.
• Diagnostic imaging including radiography, thermography, diagnostic ultrasound and bone scans may also be used to confirm the diagnosis, especially where surgical treatment is being contemplated.

Treatment

• Pain from kissing spines can be alleviated by rest, and very prolonged periods of rest may see the problem resolve.
• Ridden exercise of affected horses coming back into work after a period of rest is quite risky, as the dropping of the rest-weakened back merely encourages the problem to return.”
• In conventional veterinary practice, surgery, in combination with physiotherapy based on massage and exercises is often considered the ultimate solution.
• Basically, the bony tip of every second vertebra of the affected area is surgically resected.
• When done in specialised equine surgical facilities, the complication rate of this surgery is low. Once operated on, horses are put on a course of anti-inflammatory drugs and spelled.
• However surgery is expensive, and generally reserved for top competition horses that are young enough to justify the expense and time out of work.
• The kissing spine pain of some horses settles reasonably well with a more conservative veterinary approach of cortisone injections into the spine, instead of surgery.
• Expert attention to saddle is also particularly important in both approaches.
• The cortisone has to be injected under sterile conditions and even then can result in nasty back infections in a small number of cases.
• For the more affected horses, many simply end up prematurely retired. This is why a diagnosis of kissing spines often means the end of a horse’s career.
• Many equine spinal therapists treat kissing spines quite successfully by tending to the underlying postural causes.
• Ian’s approach has concentrated on treating spinal pain with a combination of veterinary chiropractic, acupuncture, correction of saddle fi attention to hoof and mouth soreness, and exercises to improve posture.

Reference
http://www.spinalvet.com.au/downloads/kissing-spines.pdf