Blood pressure?

[mrsp]

An interesting conversation I had with my farrier(known as GOD)
One of his clients is very prone to the dreaded lammi,despite the owner being 101% on the ball.No matter what she does if this horse is going to have an attack,then nothing can stop it. The question she posed was, during the onset/period her horse had lammi did its blood pressure rise and why don't vets. use blood pressure monitors on horses...
On questioning her vet. the answer seemed to be that as blood pressure is taken in humans because of poss. heart probs that horses do not usually suffer from,it is not used much as a diagnostic tool however blood pressure could rise as an indication of an attack of lammi. Apparently she has purchased a blood pressure monitor and uses it as a 'warning'for this particular horse and it works!!!!!!!
By the way she puts the 'band' usually put on a humans upper arm on her horses dock!!

[harleydales]

That's very interesting! I'd be interested to take both my lad's blood pressure anyway, just to see what it was for each of them.

[harveydales]

Yes that is very interesting. We know that certain blood vessels constrict at the start of a lami attack and vets inject with blood vessel dilators to help minimise damage. So it makes sense that blood pressure would rise at/before the onset of laminitis.

I would expect the blood pressure reading gives much the same indications and warnings as constantly monitoring the digital pulses though. I've become very sensitive to all the slight changes in digital pulse through 10 years of obsessive monitoring Quest. Not every one finds it easy to feel the pulses so using a human BP measuring kit could be very useful.