Management of acute and chronic pain in equine patients can be challenging. What is pain? How do we recognise pain signs in equine patients? What treatment options are available when drugs may not work and how can they best be incorporated to your equine practice?

Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) and Myofascial Trigger Points (MTrPs) refer to a relatively common chronic muscle pain complaint recognised in human medicine for over 75 years, but is only recently being considered in conventional veterinary medicine. In spite of extensive research in man and experimental animals it's still has an uncertain etiology and pathophysiology. Diagnosis relies mainly on patient signs of reduced range of movement, and pain on palpation through a special technique to find a taut muscle band containing one or more exquisitely tender foci. The various treatments described have only limited evidence of efficacy in man and treatments used in veterinary practice are based on those in man and have not been adequately tested. Direct needling of the MTrPs to elicit a local twitch response (LTR) has the best evidence for positive treatment results in humans and experimental animals. Let’s look at this condition in horses in more detail. This webinar will review the general pathway of pain sensation and the main regulation actors in pain regulations. We will then describe treatments used in managing acute and chronic pain with an emphasis on how physiotherapy and acupuncture can be best integrated in the rehabilitation of these cases and how they can benefit your patients.

Why do this course?
This course is designated for veterinarians involved regularly with lameness/poor performance cases with a special interest in rehabilitation of the equine athlete and increasing the array of treatment they can offer to their client, especially regarding physiotherapy and acupuncture. It is also open to certified acupuncturists, certified physiotherapists, certified nurses and physiotherapy students.