Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy in Horses
  by Robert N. Oglesby DVM

Extracorporeal shock wave (ESW) therapy is the use of highly energetic sound waves to "hit" diseased tissues. Originally it was developed to treat kidney stones, lithotripsy, by breaking them up. ESW has been used to treat some orthopedic conditions in people for a few years and recently has been used in horses. Conditions treated in the horse include: proximal suspensory desmitis including avulsion fractures of its insertion, bucked-shins, tibial stress fractures, proximal sesamoid bone fractures, incomplete proximal phalangeal fractures, subchondral bone pain, suspensory branch insertions, impinging dorsal spinous processes, osteoarthritis of the distal hock joints, navicular disease, and more recently digital flexor tendonitis. While originally the use was reserved for conditions involving bone or the insertion of soft tissue on bone more recently some work with purely soft tissues has begun. This article describes the process of ESW, some of the variables in treatment and describes what is known about the efficacy of the procedure.

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