Equine Imaging Modalities: An Algorithm Approach

In the past, the medical profession realized that algorithms for certain patient’s complaints and symptoms needed to be defined. Imaging modalities were increasing in type and number, creating confusion in determining the best method of examining patients. The number of diagnostic imaging choices and other testing procedures forced the development of the algorithms. There was a danger of patients being lost in the chaos of medicine in human hospitals. A medical algorithm is any formula, score, scale, diagram, or computational technique that is useful in healthcare. Medical algorithms comprise a technology for medical decision support, with the potential to decrease time demands on clinicians, support evidence-based medicine, reduce errors, and help increase the quality while decreasing the cost of care. It is estimated that the biomedical peer-reviewed literature contains over 250,000 medical algorithms across all the specialties and subspecialties of medicine. Equine medicine has not reached the complex situation that is present in human medicine, and most equine lameness/gait abnormalities are diagnosed and treated using a simple reasonable systematic approach. However, there is a decision-making process that must take place in examining lame horses. Lameness can involve one limb and one cause or have clinical evidence of multiple significant musculoskeletal abnormalities that may be secondary to one or more etiologies including, in some horses, infectious, metabolic, or neurological disease. In recent years, however, imaging options have increased in number and quality, and questions have arisen as to which of these modalities (or combinations) is the best application for a given situation. Understanding the specificity of a given modality is very important and implies a learning curve for each of us as practitioners.