This imaging modality, known colloquially as bone scans, has been used at our facility for twenty years. Alamo Pintado was the first private equine clinic in the United States to install and use nuclear scintigraphy in 1989. Since then we have performed over 3,000 scintigraphic studies on virtually every type of horse breed and use. These scans are done with the patient fully awake, though sedated to ensure the safety of our patient and equipment. It takes approximately four to five hours to complete a study; however, we recommend that we keep the patient hospitalized overnight to reduce the radiation exposure to our clients.
Typically done as an ancillary aid in lameness diagnostics, bone scans offer a “physiologic” image versus radiography, ultrasound and CAT scan, which offer an “anatomic” image. This means that we can evaluate where the ligaments and bone have suffered damage by the increased concentration of the radioactive material in those areas.This allows us to diagnose obscure lameness conditions such as early stress fractures, navicular bone inflammation, stressed ligaments, active arthritis in any of the joints and a myriad of other conditions that cause pain and lameness. It also allows us to differentiate between active, painful arthritic lesions and older, quiescent lesions, which should not be a source of pain.