Emergency - Please Help

[dappleton]

Hi All, DHorse had a kick to his pastern (front of p2 area) 16days ago, after about 3 days a lump started to appear on the opposite side of the pastern about 2inches from initial wound, initially thought to be an absess but nothing every drained from it. Vets have been treating from day 1 - x-rays, various antibiotics, iv and oral anti-inflammatories and analgesics - but now say its an infection of the tendon sheath and they want to have him euthanized as they say they can't do anything. Now, if we were in the UK i'd go with the Vets diagnosis but as we're far, far away with very basic vet facilities I just can't believe we can give up this easily...so if anyone has had any similar experiences, any ideas on drugs, procedures, alternative diagnosis etc....please just looking for a ray of hope that i'm right to carry on until the horse tells me he's ready to give up!

Very unlikely, but could it be a bone chip? One of the pointers at my yard had similar - went very lame due to splint, vet diagnoses splint fracture, big lump appeared that I cold hosed. While cold hosing the lump fell off leaving a huge hole. Hole healed, horse sound as a pound.

Looking at the horse and hound site , general consensus is that most horses go for surgery to flush the joint out together with some aggressive antibiotics . I don't know if this is an option? Wishing you luck .

I saw that thread on H&H too Plomino and thought it looked quite positive but then didn't get a chance to post as I was rushing to get ready to go out. It's here. There were other threads but that's as far as I got.

Thanks, i'll have a look on H&H - just willing to give anything a go right now. Vet has now found some drugs used in humans when all else fails and giving them a try - the vet says they have worked in dogs before so fingers crossed! - at least it has bought me 5days of hope.
Sadly I think the opportunity to flush has passed, i'm not sure why it wasn't done, it's only now i'm discovering that it should have been - lack of an operating theatre and risk of further infection could have been reasons. The joint was drained and ABs injected directly into the joint but obvious some of the little bacterial blighters still survived and have now set up home in the tendon sheath which can't be flushed.
Thank you for taking the time to help ...i'll let you know the outcome.