Activo Med – Fracture Healing

29/05/13

Did you know that Activo Med can help with a huge range of healing, including Fractures?

activo med leg wrap
Activo med rug with leg wraps

A customer from NZ has contacted us this week about her horse who has unfortunately suffered a fractured fibula. The owner has an Activo Med Therapy system including leg wraps, so we were able to advise that the use of Sequence 7, or a customised program of 2 x 30min treatments daily, 4 – 10 hz, and 2-6mT in intensity. We look forward to hearing how this horse recovers.

For those scientific people out there… here’s an excerpt from a 2005 Study into PEMF & its effect on fibular osteotomies.

J. Orthop Res. 2005 Sep;23(5):1035-46
Pulsed electromagnetic field treatments enhance the healing of fibular osteotomies.
Mudura RJ Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Orthopaedic Research Center, Lerner Research Institute of The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA.

This study tested the hypothesis that pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) treatments augment and accelerate the healing of bone trauma. It utilized micro-computed tomography imaging of live rats that had received bilateral 0.2 mm fibular osteotomies
(approximately 0.5% acute bone loss) as a means to assess the in vivo rate dynamics of hard callus formation and overall callus volume.
Starting 5 days post-surgery, osteotomized right hind limbs were exposed 3 h daily to Physio-Stim PEMF, 7 days a
week for up to 5 weeks of treatment. The contralateral hind limbs served as sham-treated, within-animal internal controls. Although both PEMF- and sham-treatment groups exhibited similar onset of hard callus at approximately 9 days after surgery, a 2-fold
faster rate of hard callus formation was observed thereafter in PEMF-treated limbs, yielding a 2-fold increase in callus volume by 13-20 days after surgery.

The quantity of the new woven bone tissue within the osteotomy sites was significantly better in PEMFtreated versus sham-treated fibulae as assessed via hard tissue histology. The apparent
modulus of each callus was assessed via a cantilever bend test and indicated a 2-fold increase in callus stiffness in the PEMF-treated over sham-treated fibulae.

PEMF-treated fibulae exhibited an apparent modulus at the end of 5-weeks that was approximately 80% that of unoperated fibulae. Overall, these data indicate that Physio-Stim PEMF treatment improved osteotomy repair. These beneficial effects on bone healing were not observed when a different PEMF waveform, Osteo-Stim, was used. This latter observation demonstrates the specificity in the relationship between waveform characteristics and
biological outcomes.
If you would like more information on how the Activo Med Therapy System can assist your horse, talk to us today.

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