J. Zohmann
Veterinary director of the Rehabilitation centre for horses and small animals (Vierbeiner Reha – Zentrum), Dr. Marc – Str. 4, D 34537 Bad Wildungen, Germany
Very often we get patients from other vets, who have problems in finding out the reasons for lamenesses in horses, dogs or other animals. A lot of them are suffering of blocked vertebrae, blocked sacroiliac joints or desmopathies (enthesiopathies, insertion tendopathies); all these problems of the motion apparatus are nearly unknown in veterinary medicine and so the patients did not only visit a lot of vets but they are also suffering from a lot of different treatments. Well dosed and exact localized infiltrations with local anesthetics (lidocaine or procaine 1% or less without vasoconstriction), if necessary combined with chiropractic manipulation, did finish the suffering of several patients (also the financial suffering of their owners!).
Like in human medicine a lot of diseases of the locomotion apparatus is based on or supported by internal diseases.
So e. g. lamenesses of the hind limb may be the secondary effect of gynecological or andrological problems. Very often the patients history gives hints and we sometimes registrate, that the animal had complications during labour or there are disorders of the sexual cycle or other striking changes of sexual behaviour (pseudogravidities, hypersexuality etc.).
Following that very frequently occuring symptomatic complex it is evident, that only treating the limb without considering the pelvic organs will be quite inefficient! The most effective neural therapeutic procedure for treatment of the locomotion apparatus is (we keep to the example of a lameness of the hind limb):
l. Exact diagnosis (based on all diagnostic tools – starting with a very detailed anamnesis, inspection during rest and moving, palpation, function tests and, if necessary, X-ray, CT or MRI)
2. Local and segmental infiltrations (using active trigger points / acupuncture points, like St 31: trigger point of the rectus femoris muscle and GV 3: central point for the hind limb)
3. Neural techniques; for the hind limb: Blocking the lumbar sympathetic trunk or – as described above – in cases of disturbance originating from the pelvic organs: Blocking of the uterovaginal plexus (paracervical block).
4. If these kinds of treatment are not successful, one has to look for a so-called irritation centre or a non – segmentally related disturbing region (“disturbing field”, like scars, chronic inflammations).
Neural therapy is a very sufficient kind of treatment and offers the chance to treat causally by elimination of chronically burdening irritation centres (“disturbing fields”). From this view we have to consider, that a disorders of the locomotion apparatus have not to be treated for itself alone but there might be some other factors somewhere in the body, which may cause or support this lameness.