Speckle Tracking Echocardiography in Cats with Arterial Thromboembolism

Abstract

Two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) is a new approach developed for cardiac imaging that provides better assessment of regional and global myocardial abnormalities than standard echocardiography techniques. Latest studies have demonstrated that asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy have variable areas of patchy myocardial fibrosis in left ventricular myocardium. However, no previous studies in cats with feline arterial thromboembolism (ATE) have used 2D-STE to assess myocardial function. The purpose of the study was to evaluate regional radial strain variables of the left ventricle using 2D-STE in cats with ATE. Ten cats affected with ATE and ten healthy control cats were studied. Cats with ATE, in the study group, were diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). This group was further divided into both intraventricular septum (IVS) and left vetricular (LV) hypertrophy (IVS-HCM, n:5) and only LV free wall hypertrophy (LV-HCM, n:5) groups. Compared to the control group, cats in LV-HCM and IVS-HCM groups had a thicker IVSd. LVFWd were considerably higher in LV-HCM group than in both IVS-HCM and the control group (8.04 ± 0.93, 4.9 ± 0.4, 3,91 ± 0,17 respectively, P<0.001). EF values were not statistically different between the groups. Values from Mid-lateral (ML) and Mid-posterior (MP) regions in cats with IVS and LV hypertrophy were significantly lower than in the control group (both P<0.05). Our results showed that MP and ML strain values were decreased in the LV.

Keywords

• Feline arterial thromboembolism
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• Speckle Tracking Echocardiography

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