Clinica e diagnostica strumentale delle patologie del dito equino

Abstract

Many times, orthopaedic veterinarians get a misdiagnosis, incomplete diagnosis or a wrong diagnosis. This scenario is too frequent, that involves a waste of time in solving a pathology or just finding the right treatment for it. Overvaluing the personal experience, trusting the routinely way of operating, the pressure and hurry in giving the owners a diagnosis, are easy ways to make mistakes. Also, considering diagnostic instruments able to give us answers we can never reach, is not completely true. In fact, they provide us information and data rather than certain answers. We, veterinarians, should not forget using our first instrument of diagnosis: sensation, understood as the ability to feel things physically. Now how? We collect the anamnesis and the patient’s ID through hearing, the visual inspection is performed with the sight, the palpation is possible through the touch first then the use of an instrument, the smell helps in some evident abnormal smell mostly coming from the hoof, finally, the taste is not almost used anymore. Since the veterinary medicine is a medical science, it needs to follow the laws of the scientific method. Thus, it is very important to perform every step of the diagnostic process and go to the next step only once we perform and assess the information we just obtained. It is not the tool that drives us to the diagnosis; we are the ones that must not be tired of observing and thinking with method. If we know which diagnostic tool is needed, we will easily reach a diagnosis; our suspect will be confirmed; it will let us to see what we want to see.