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Updated: June 22, 2025
Acute arthritis may be septic or aseptic, and there seems to be a remarkable tendency for recovery in cases of septic arthritis involving this joint in the horse. Chronic arthritis with destruction of articular surfaces and ankylosis, is seldom observed.
Routier speaks of ankylosis of the tongue of seventeen years' duration. Jurist records such abnormal mobility of the tongue that the patient was able to project the tongue into the nasopharynx. Wherry and Winslow record similar instances. There have been individuals with bifid tongues, after the normal type of serpents and saurians, and others who possessed a supernumerary tongue. Rev.
Wasting of the muscles, especially the extensors, in the vicinity of the joint is a constant accompaniment of arthritis. On account of the involvement of the articular surfaces, arthritis is apt to be followed by ankylosis. The term empyema is sometimes employed to indicate that the cavity of the joint contains pus.
In the milder forms recovery is the rule, with more or less complete restoration of function. In more severe forms the joint may be permanently damaged as a result of fibrous or bony ankylosis, or from displacement or dislocation. From changes in the peri-articular structures there may be contracture in an undesirable position, and in young subjects the growth of the limb may be interfered with.
Recovery is apt to be attended with impairment of movement due to adhesions, ankylosis, or contracture of the peri-articular structures. Caseous foci in the interior of the bones may become encapsulated, and a cure be thus effected, or they may be the cause of a relapse of the disease at a later date.
A suppurative arthritis, like that caused by ordinary pus microbes, may be the result of gonococcal infection alone or of a mixed infection. Usually only one joint is affected, but the condition may be multiple. The articular cartilages are destroyed, the ends of the bones are covered with granulations, extra-articular abscesses form, and complete osseous ankylosis results.
If the involvement persists with sufficient active inflammation, there may follow erosion of cartilage and incurable lameness. If extensive necrosis of cartilage takes place, the attendant pain will be sufficient to cause the animal to favor the diseased part and such immobilization enhances early ankylosis nature's substitute for resolution in this disease.
When bony ankylosis has occurred with the joint in an undesirable attitude for example flexion at the hip or knee it can sometimes be remedied by osteotomy or by a wedge-shaped resection of the bone, with or without such additional division of the contracted soft parts as will permit of the limb being placed in the attitude desired.
After repeated recurrences, there is ankylosis with deformity, the patient becoming a helpless cripple. On account of the tendency to visceral complications, the tenure of life is uncertain. From the nature of the disease, treatment is for the most part palliative. Salicylates are only of service during the exacerbations attended with pyrexia.
An obliquity of the bone may result when one half of the epiphysial cartilage is destroyed and the other half continues to form bone, giving rise to such deformities as knock-knee and club-hand. Deformity may also result from vicious union of a pathological fracture, permanent displacement of an epiphysis, contracture, ankylosis, or dislocation of the adjacent joint.
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