Análise da função atrial esquerda em gatos aparentemente saudáveis

Abstract

Cardiomyopathies are disorders of the cardiovascular system that are quite common in feline medicine, with hypertrophic phenotype cardiomyopathy being the most common disease that covers the majority of the cat population. Doppler echocardiography is widely used for diagnosing these diseases and is routinely applied in small animal clinics. It is important to emphasize that the increase in the left atrial dimension and the decrease in its function can be important markers for evaluating the evolution and chronicity of the hypertrophic phenotype cardiomyopathy in cats, contributing to staging the disease, as well as predisposing the possibility of occurrence congestive event or feline arterial thromboembolism. The objective was to evaluate and standardize the indices of left atrial function and volume in healthy cats, establishing reference intervals that could be applied in the diagnosis of animals with heart disease. Therefore, in the methodology, the atrial volumes of ten animals were measured using the Simpson and Area-Length methods in three phases (reservoir, pump, and conduction) and a comparison was made for standardization. Good reproducibility and little variability of volume measurements were obtained among the cats studied, being pioneering research, as there are still no formally reported references comparing the methods used in cats sedated with only butorphanol.