Dr. David Wilson, a professor of large animal surgery at the University of Saskatchewan, has been skeptical about the effectiveness of periosteal elevation for a long time.

"I can remember foals that had bad cases of pneumonia when they came in to us with crooked legs to undergo periosteal stripping," he said. "We would treat the pneumonia and wait for them to get healthy. By the time they were ready for surgery, a month or six weeks down the road, their legs had come so far in terms of getting straight that we had no desire to perform any sort of operation. Seeing crooked legs get straight on their own led me to wonder. I had also seen legs that were stripped that didn't straighten."

In their project, Wilson, Dr. Emma Read, and other members of the University of Saskatchewan's research team surgically created angular limb deformities in the front legs of 10 foals using screws and wires. The mean angulation of the legs at the time the foals entered the study was 5.4 degrees. The implants were removed when the legs reached 15 degrees of angulation or the foals were 90 days old. A randomly chosen leg in each foal was left untreated while the other was subjected to periosteal elevation.

The foals were assessed at two-week intervals until their legs returned to within three degrees of their baseline measurements (at approximately six to eight weeks). While the angulation of both front legs decreased significantly, no significant difference was found between the treated limbs and the control limbs. That information was presented at the Veterinary Orthopedic Society's conference earlier this year in Canada. In long-term follow-ups "at six months and beyond," the results did not change, according to Wilson.

"I want to stress our conclusions are based on our research model," he said "We are fully prepared to accept that there were limitations to the study."

One of the biggest criticisms of the Florida and Canadian studies is that the periosteal elevation technique was not tested on foals with naturally occurring angular limb deformities. Slone is addressing that issue by conducting another study on 10 foals that have been knock-kneed since birth. On five foals, periosteal elevation was performed on the more crooked leg. On the other five, the technique was performed on the straighter limb.