Clinical outcomes of unicortical condylar fracture in 78 Thoroughbred racehorses in Japan

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Background: Exercise-associated sudden death (EASD) negatively affects horse welfare, jockey safety and racing's social licence to operate.Little research has considered risk factors for EASD in racing Thoroughbreds.Objectives: To estimate the incidence of, and identify risk factors for, EASD in jump-racing Thoroughbreds in Great Britain Study design: Retrospective cohort.Methods: Data for all jump starts made on British racecourses between January 2010 and December 2024 and records on all race-related EASD cases over the same period were extracted from industry databases.Exercise-associated sudden death was defined as acute collapse and death, during or immediately after a race, in the absence of fatal musculoskeletal injury.Incidence was calculated per 10,000 starts.Risk factors were evaluated using mixed-effects logistic regression.Results: The overall incidence was 5.45 EASDs per 10,000 starts (n = 256/469,355, 95% CI 5.44-5.47).For every 1-year increase in horse age, EASD odds increased by 21% (95% CI 1.14-1.29,p < 0.001).Odds of EASD were 34% lower in females than males (95% CI 0.44-0.99,p = 0.043).Horses making their first race start had 2.69 times higher EASD odds compared to those that had raced 5 to 7 times in the preceding year (95% CI 1.38-5.28,p = 0.004).Horses that had not raced in the previous three weeks had greater EASD odds than those that had (all categories p ≤ 0.021).Odds of EASD increased by 3% per 100 m increase in race distance (95% CI 1.01-1.05,p < 0.001).Selling races had 3.23 times higher EASD odds (95% CI 1.58-6.60,p = 0.006) than non-selling races.Main limitations: Analysis was restricted to available raceday information.Low EASD incidence limited statistical power.Conclusions: Incidence of EASD was higher than previously reported in jump racing.Older horses, horses competing for the first time, and those that had not raced in the preceding three weeks had greater EASD odds.