How to treat cheek teeth diastema in the horse

Diastema (pleural diastemata) is the presence of a detectable space between adjacent teeth. The terms valve diastemata or closed diastemata have been proposed to differentiate these pathological diastemata from the normal anatomical diastemata present between the incisors (or canine teeth in males) and the cheek teeth (“bars of the mouth”) or from a wide interdental space, e.g., the site where a cheek tooth has been lost. Diastema of the cheek teeth (CT) is one of the most chronic painful dental disorders in horses and therefore is a major cause of quidding in horses, particularly in those where there is no obvious dental overgrowths on oral examination. Equine CT diastemata can be caused by developmental problems such as lack of compression of the occlusal surface of the cheek ...