Frequency of Injuries in Tarsus Diagnosed at the Radiological Level in Colombian Creole Horses Breed between 2018 and 2020: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

The tarsus is a highly predisposed structure to present various injuries, with osteoarthritis being one of the main causes of pathology at the joint level. Several factors related to joint damage have been considered; the most common are external trauma, joint instability, ossification alterations, infections and iatrogenesis. In the diagnosis, conventional radiography is established as a diagnostic aid of wide value, commonly finding lesions such as osteophytes, decreased joint space, sclerosis, bone proliferation, periosteal reaction and bone lysis. The objective of this investigation is to determine the frequency of radiological findings in the tarsus, for which a retrospective descriptive study is carried out, in which a database of 53 horses of the Colombian Creole breed was evaluated, of which, according to the criteria of selection, n = 23 animals were obtained, for a total of 46 tarsus radiographs. The variables to be determined are the presence of arthrophytes, decreased joint space, bone proliferation, sclerosis, periosteal reaction, bone lysis, osteophytes and enthesophytes, of which it was found that the arthrophyte is the most common finding, with 56.52% (26/46), followed by the decrease in joint space, with 30.43% (14/46). It was also determined that the most affected anatomical structures were the intertarsal joints, being the distal intertarsal the one with the highest frequency of presentation, with 67.4% (31/46), and the proximal intertarsal, with 58.66 (27/46).