Name of Eye Growth??

[Personal Champ]

Hopeing someone can help me out here - a few years ago I read an article in, I think, Equus Magazine on a type of eye growth that looked like a cauliflower and kinda floated, and could obstruct vision. Surgery was possible.

Tonight a vet came to the barn on an emergency and checked a horse's eyes on my request - said there are growths there and he could go to Penn or Cornell for surgery.

I wasn't there and the vet was involved in the real emergency, so the barn owner didn't catch the name of the growth - am thinking the article and diagnosis are one and the same. Will be calling vet Monday but am dying to find it on the internet, and I can't.

Can someone help?

[McVillesMom]

Are you thinking of cystic corpora nigra? The corpora nigra are normal structures of the equine eye - they "stick out" over the pupil - and they can become enlarged, enough that they compromise vision. They can be deflated with a laser.

Horses can also get tumors within the eyeball (melanomas, etc) but they don't usually look like cauliflower...

[Personal Champ]

It might be cystic. I took a flashlight this morning - if you shine it in the eye you can clearly see these little cysts at the top of his eye, where the brown ends. They range from pencil point to pencil eraser in size. The BO who held him for the exam said the vet stated that they would definitely impair vision, they tend to move as the horse does and even sometimes break off and float within the eye.

Does that sound right? Vet won't be in til Monday...

[McVillesMom]

It sounds like it might be. Pencil eraser size definitely sounds too big...