u/Elisy_

Hi everyone,

I’m posting because I’m honestly struggling to find similar cases, especially in such a young horse, and at this point I feel a bit stuck.

My 15 month old colt developed what vets initially suspected was cellulitis/lymphangitis last August, when he was only 6 months old and had just been weaned.

The whole thing seemed to start from a tiny scratch on the leg. Interestingly, even during the initial episode, he never had fever, never seemed systemically ill, and remained pretty bright overall. He also never developed any actual skin lesions/crusting/oozing etc. apart from the initial tiny scratch.

When the symptoms first appeared, the vet initially thought it was caused by a knock/injury and prescribed anti-inflammatories. The swelling went down but came back a few days later. He therefore only started antibiotics about twenty days later.
The leg never returned to normal afterwards (the swelling is still the same as it was during the initial episode)

Since then, he’s had persistent swelling in one hind leg, mostly around the fetlock/pastern/lower cannon area (never above).

A few things about the swelling:
- it’s soft/pitting rather than hard
- compression helps a lot (but some days, even right after removing the compression wraps, you can clearly see the marks left by the compression in the swelling/lymphatic fluid)
- at the beginning, the leg would refill very quickly after removing wraps (sometimes within 4–5 hours)
- now it seems to refill much more slowly, and it usually takes closer to 12–15 hours before the swelling becomes very noticeable again
- if I leave the leg without wraps, it obviously fills but interestingly it seems to reach a stable “plateau” and doesn’t just keep getting bigger and bigger
- he’s comfortable and moving well
- skin condition is good
- no heat/fever/major pain currently

One thing I find interesting is that when he was on dexamethasone/trichlormethiazide (Oedex), the leg would go completely back to normal — honestly perfectly normal-looking. But once treatment stopped, the swelling came back in a few days.

According to the vets, there still seems to be ongoing inflammation within the leg. We haven’t tried a more aggressive/long-term corticosteroid protocol yet.

Right now I’m alternating compression every other night because I’m trying to let the leg “work on its own” a bit and not rely on wraps constantly. But the day after removing compression, the swelling becomes very significant again.

We’ve done:
- ultrasounds
- x-rays
- multiple vet exams
- biopsies
- cultures/PCRs

The biopsies mainly showed mild chronic inflammation with congestion and edema, but no evidence of active infection, bacteria, or significant fibrosis. The pathology report described mildly congested and edematous dermal tissue with inflammatory cells clustered around the blood vessels, mostly lymphocytes with a few histiocytes.

He has now seen 5 different vets for this issue, and unfortunately we’ve kind of reached the “we’re not really sure what else to try” stage.

We also tried medical leeches two times without success, and so far the different supplements we tested haven’t really changed much either. I recently added bioflavonoids to his diet about 15–20 days ago, but no obvious improvement yet (although I know it’s probably still too early to judge). Movement doesn’t seem to help.

At this point, the feeling seems to be that there may be some chronic lymphatic damage/dysfunction left over from the original inflammatory episode.

Right now I’m mostly trying to figure out the best long-term management and whether there’s hope for further improvement considering how young he is.

Has anyone dealt with something similar, especially in a young horse?
Did the leg improve over time or mostly stabilize?
And for those who had horses with chronic lymphatic issues/lymphangitis, were they still able to have a comfortable athletic career afterward?

Would really appreciate hearing other experiences because most chronic lymphangitis cases I find involve older horses (Although I’m taking all feedback into considération).

Thanks so much in advance to anyone willing to share their experience or advice, it would help us a lot.