Study supports spinal accessory nerve reinnervation in horses

Version 1

A prospective cohort study in Veterinary Surgery reports that standing selective laryngeal reinnervation using the spinal accessory nerve restored functional arytenoid abduction during exercise in four of five Thoroughbred mares with experimentally induced recurrent laryngeal neuropathy at 12 months after surgery. The authors also found histopathologic evidence consistent with successful reinnervation, adding tissue-level support to the functional findings. The work comes from a group including Ariane Campos Schweitzer, Céline Mespoulhes-Rivière, Justin D. Perkins, Norm G. Ducharme, Richard J. Piercy, Nicola Lynch, and Fabrice Rossignol, and adds new data to a long-running effort to improve surgical options for equine “roaring” beyond static airway-opening procedures. (deepdyve.com)

Why it matters: Recurrent laryngeal neuropathy is a progressive neuropathy of the recurrent laryngeal nerve that impairs arytenoid abduction, reduces airflow, and can limit performance, especially in young athletic horses. Prosthetic laryngoplasty remains the standard surgical approach, but it creates a fixed opening and carries risks including coughing, aspiration, implant failure, and infection. Reinnervation has been attractive because it aims to restore active muscle function, but adoption has been limited by technical complexity and the long timeline to recovery. This study is small and experimental, but it suggests a spinal accessory nerve transfer may produce both functional recovery at exercise and histologic evidence of reinnervation, which is the kind of proof clinicians have been waiting for. (merckvetmanual.com)

What to watch: The next question is whether these results can be reproduced in larger clinical populations, with clearer case selection criteria and head-to-head comparisons against established procedures. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)