ArticleFrontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland)2023
Development, refinement, and validation of an equine musculoskeletal pain scale.
Article in Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Preliminary investigation of equine veterinary hospital staff attitudes towards pain assessment in a single centre.The Veterinary record · 2026Article
- A multimodal approach to equine thoracolumbar myofascial pain: integrating clinical examination, AI-based gait analysis, and the ridden horse pain ethogram.BMC veterinary research · 2026Article
- Drivers of decision making in pain diagnosis and treatment: Findings from an ethnographic study of veterinary practice.Equine veterinary journal · 2026Article
- Client-specific outcome measure for chronic osteoarthritis pain assessment in horses.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Sleep architecture and lying behavior in horses across age groups and two housing systems: an overnight non-invasive EEG study.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Preliminary assessment of the leukocyte coping capacity as a point of care marker in horses with stress associated diseases.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Indicators of mortality risk in ageing horses.GeroScience · 2025Article
- Automated Cattle Head and Ear Pose Estimation Using Deep Learning for Animal Welfare Research.Veterinary sciences · 2025Article
- No More Evasion: Redefining Conflict Behaviour in Human-Horse Interactions.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Owners' everyday interactions with their horse: Pain-related issues and those of veterinary concern.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Article
- Investigating conditioned pain modulation in horses: can the lip-twitch be used as a conditioning stimulus?Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Time budgets and weight shifting as indicators of pain in hospitalized horses.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Musculoskeletal disease is a common cause of chronic pain that is often overlooked and inadequately treated, impacting the quality of life of humans and horses alike. Lameness due to musculoskeletal pain is prevalent in horses, but the perception of pain by owners is low compared with veterinary diagnosis. Therefore, this study aims to establish and validate a pain scale for chronic equine orthopaedic pain that is user-friendly for horse owners and veterinarians to facilitate the identification and monitoring of pain in horses. The newly developed musculoskeletal pain scale (MPS) was applied to 154 horses (mean age 20 ± 6.4 years SD) housed at an equine sanctuary, of which 128 (83%) suffered from chronic orthopaedic disease. To complete the MPS, the horses were observed and videotaped from a distance while at rest in their box or enclosure. In addition, they received a complete clinical and orthopaedic exam. The need for veterinary intervention to address pain (assessed and executed by the sanctuary independent from this study) was used as a longitudinal health outcome to determine the MPS's predictive validity. To determine the interrater agreement, the MPS was scored for a randomly selected subset of 30 horses by six additional blinded raters, three equine veterinary practitioners, and three experienced equestrians. An iterative process was used to refine the tool based on improvements in the MPS's correlation with lameness evaluated at the walk and trot, predictive validity for longitudinal health outcomes, and interrater agreement. The intraclass correlation improved from 0.77 of the original MPS to 0.88 of the refined version (95% confidence interval: 0.8-0.94). The refined MPS correlated significantly with lameness at the walk (
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.