Epidemiologist calls for better reporting of non-fatal racehorse injuries

LEXINGTON, Ky. – North American racetracks should attempt to improve their reporting of non-fatal racehorse injuries because of the potential benefits of using the data to predict fatal injuries, an epidemiologist who studies the data said on Wednesday at the Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit at Keeneland Racecourse.

The epidemiologist, Tim Parkin of the University of Glasgow, said that two indicators of a non-fatal injury – an appearance by a horse on a vet’s list and the reporting of an injury to an industry-maintained database, the Equine Injury Database – are two of the most significant factors in assessing whether a horse is at higher risk of a fatal injury in the future. Because of the strength of the associations, those correlations arose relatively early in the analysis of the EID, which has records from 96 percent of the races run in North America since its launch by the racing industry in 2009.

However, Parkin also said that he believes the database is missing perhaps “thousands” of non-fatal injuries because of vast differences between many tracks in the number of non-fatal injuries that are reported each year, discrepancies that would seem to strongly suggest that some tracks are doing better jobs than others of reporting the injuries. With more data, Parkin said, the industry could further refine the predictive ability of the EID’s data, which are used by regulatory vets to flag horses for additional scrutiny in prerace exams.

The current analysis of the data indicates that a horse with a reported injury to the database has a 61 percent higher chance of suffering a fatal injury in a subsequent start than a horse who has not had an injury reported to the database. However, only 46 percent of horses with a reported injury ever start again, according to the database, so the risk for a horse who returns to a race is actually higher than the 61 percent increase.

“There’s clearly evidence to the significance of non-fatal injuries,” Parkin said.

Parkin said he is unsure why some tracks seem to be reporting more non-fatal injuries than other tracks. Standards for reporting non-fatal injuries to the database are not uniform, and some tracks appear to be better than other tracks – some tracks report one non-fatal injury per fatal injury at their tracks, while others report as many as seven fatal injuries per one non-fatal injury, Parkin said.

“I would estimate that we are missing 50 percent of non-fatal injuries” that occur during racing, Parkin said.

With greater reporting of non-fatal injuries, Parkin said, the data from fatal injuries could be better connected to the specific type of non-fatal injuries suffered by the horses. That could lead to the creation of better programs for track veterinarians to designate horses for greater scrutiny when they are entered in a race after suffering an injury or being placed on the vet’s list.

Racing commissions that use data from the EID to flag horses have said that the programs have been successful in reducing fatality rates, especially in states like Kentucky and Minnesota. However, there is no causal link established yet between the additional scrutiny and reductions, and it’s possible as well that the existence of the programs has led horsemen to be more cautious in entering horses who may have problems or will be flagged.

“I like to think that we as an industry [over the past 10 years] have become so much more aware of when a horse should be retired,” trainer Graham Motion said when asked on a separate panel at the summit about the risk factors that trainers weigh when they receive a horse from another trainer or get a horse back in the barn after a layoff. “We’re much more conscious of it now than we used to be, perhaps.”

Rick Baedeker, the executive director of the California Horse Racing Board, said later at the summit that fatal injuries in California are down 35 percent in the current fiscal year since the board’s equine medical director, Rick Arthur, implemented an “at-risk” program requiring at least two inspections of a horse who is entered and displaying at least one of several risk factors. Approximately 15 percent to 25 percent of horses entered at California tracks have been designated as “at risk” under the program, Baedeker said.

“It’s a very simple thing,” Baedeker said. “It’s logical to pay more attention to the horses that are most at risk.”