Hypertrophy Epiglottic

[Charlie Horse Acres]

My horse started having some abnormal signs so took her to the vet and he scoped her and discovered that she has a hypertrophy epiglottic. My vet has never run into this before so he is checking with a throat specialist but said it would not hurt if I checked in the mini world to see if others have run into this. He said it is not an Epiglottic entrapment but the pictures I saw when he was scoping and the pics on the web are similar if that will give you kind of an idea of what we are looking at. Well, to the untrained eye they look similar anyways. If anyone has run into this I would really love to know. I was planning on breeding this mare but if this is something that could be passed on to a foal then I can not use her for breeding.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Di.

 

[Riverrose28]

I'm going to respond with what I"m reading from my vetreinary guide, I'm not sure it is the same, but accortding to what I"m reading it is: an epigloyyis that is smaller or less developed than normal. It is not common. Affected horse are less tolerate of exercise, and cough frequently, Nasopharyngeal eddoscopy reveals redundent folds, often swollen and ulcerated. Treatment involves sugically removing the rdundant folds. this is an uncommon condition and most often seen in two or three year old, signs are similar to a soft palate disorder. Hope this helps it is taken from Horse owners vetrinary handdbook. I'm not even sure if it is the same condition.

 

[Charlie Horse Acres]

Not sure if that is what he was talking about. He told me that the Epiglottic was 3 times larger than normal but that it did not look swollen, he thought it looked like that she was built this way but I have had this mare for 5 years and this last couple of months is when she first started showing the unusual signs. The vet also thinks that allergies may be part of the problem but not what created the larger epiglottic. Has anyone heard of this being a genetic problem?

I appreciate your reply. I am going to try looking more on the internet but I am just not finding hardly anything.

Thanks again

Di

 

[drmatthewtaylor]

We may be having a bit of a language barrier, but I haven't heard of Hypertrophy Epiglottic and I wasn't able to find a reference for it either in online or text resources.

Hypertrophy describes something growing too big. Is the epiglottis too large and growing?

Or are you trying to describe Atrophy, which is too small (and a more common condition)?

Dr Taylor

 

[Charlie Horse Acres]

I had never heard of it before either but I had the vet spell it for me even to make sure I had the correct information.

The vet said the epiglottis was 3 to 4 times larger than normal but it is not blocking anything. It is actually not closing at all. It is like it is too big to close. Not sure if it is growing or not as we have just now discovered the problem.

The vet I use I have a lot of respect for (even if he is not a fan of miniatures, he is still good with them and several of us in the area that breed use him) and he has been an equine vet for a number of years so when he told me he had never seen this before I assumed it was a rare condition. He is also not one to blow sunshine and usually tends to prepare you for the worst which half the time his guess is right so what he was saying was not sounding to good. He thinks she was born with this and it was never noticed because she has recently developed an allergy that is being exacerbated by the condition (or vice versa). I keep praying that she developed an allergy that caused the condition but the vet pretty much said no. He gave her an allergy shot and has put her on antihistamines to deal with the allergy part and to see if that makes her symptoms go away that she has developed over the last month.

Here is how this all came about in case that helps anyone recognize the symptoms. I noticed that she was drooling when I went out to feed and was grinding her teeth. I assumed at this point that she just needed floated and we already had our yearly vet visit scheduled so did not think much about it. We then had to move another mare in with her so they were sharing the same paddock and shelter. Plenty of room but this mare can be a bully sometimes. I started noticing her frothing at the mouth and grinding her teeth. This was within a week of when she was scheduled to go to the vet so when we took her to the vet we discussed it with him. At the time the vet thought she was stressing from having the other mare in there and was trying to develop an ulcer. He floated her teeth as she did have one point and I moved her to a smaller private pen and put two other mares together. She seemed to be doing ok (with the exception that every one of my miniatures had a reaction to the new yearly shots. All came down with colds) I thought it was an ulcer we averted so all was right with the world again. In fact I thought she was fine so when she came in heat I bred her with my new stallion. No more frothing but she did seem to be grinding but she does this when she is upset. I decided to take her with me when I went on my walk to let her have some personal time. (Jealous of the two new horses and I had retired her from showing as we were getting ready to start breeding her) So I am doing a brisk walk with her and about 10 min into the walk she starts coughing and as she coughs she is frothing again. I call the vet, he scopes her and this is what he found. This is a horse that I had practically lived with last year as we were showing her plus she is my baby so if she crosses her eyes funny I am calling the vet which makes this even worst.

Sorry, I was trying to avoid the long story but if this helps with ideas on how this came about I will be thrilled. The vet wants me to try her for 4 weeks on the antihistamines and if that works then he is going to test her for allergies so we can figure out what we need to get rid of. Vet is thinking she has developed an allergy to our cottonwood tree. The horses do not have access to it but of course the cotton kinda goes where it wants. The only big beautiful tree we have on the property but if it is making Babe sick then timber! But the vet does not think that the allergy and the hypertrophy epiglottis are related except that she is getting hit harder by the allergy than normal because of having the hypertrophy epiglottis.

Again, sorry for being so long and thank you for any help anyone can give me.

Di

 

[drmatthewtaylor]

Haven't heard of hypertrophy, but the cartilage can ossify. Guess I'm not much help from here.

Good Luck,

Dr Taylor

 

[Charlie Horse Acres]

Another thought my vet had was that he had heard that the dwarf gene can cause cartilage to continue to grow? This horse has absolutely no signs of dwarfism. Any thoughts on this? Is there a blood test that can be done for the dwarf gene?

 

[Charlie Horse Acres]

Haven't heard of hypertrophy, but the cartilage can ossify. Guess I'm not much help from here.

Good Luck,

Dr Taylor

My vets assistant is thinking about doing a paper on this if they discover what is going on. If so I will try and remember to put a link to it on the forum.

 

[Sandee]

I'm sure that your vet know much more about this than I found but I did find a site about people with enlarged (which is what hypertrophy means) epigolottic The site for humans [ http://www.buzzle.co...epiglottis.html ] indicates that the cause is often micro-organisms (bateria or fungus). Just a thought that he might check for. I am afraid that my search also found people with this that said Drs. were still hunting for the cause of their problems. It sounds very unusual and difficult to treat --sorry for you and your mare.