Impiego di tecniche non invasive per la valutazione dell'insufficienza mitralica nel cane

In spite of the fact that several accurate techniques are progressively getting available in veterinary medicine, the measurement of regurgitation volume in dogs affected by valve insufficiency still represents a diagnostic challenge. Since acquired atrio-ventricular valve insufficiency represents the most frequent cardiac defect in dogs, standard techniques are urgently needed to measure the regurgitation volume, in order to define an adequate diagnosis and reliable prognosis. At present, techniques for valve insufficiency evaluation can be classified in invasive and non invasive; both of these groups include quantitative and semiquantitative methods, for the quantification of the regurgitation volume and the evaluation of the degree of insufficiency respectively. The aim of our work was to apply both quantitative and semiquantitative non invasive techniques to measure dog mitral valve insufficiency. 98 dogs, 75 of which affected by different degrees of mitral valve insufficiency, were evaluated. The Doppler quantitative technique, which is thought to be the gold standard method in human echocardiography, was applied on 23 unaffected subjects in order to verify its validity on dogs. Different techniques were than evaluated and compared on the basis of the analysis of the 75 affected dogs. The results of the study confirmed validity and accuracy of the quantitative Doppler technique and a tendency of the PISA method to underestimate the degree of mitral insufficiency; we believe that the origin of this fact could be probably traced back to the use of non-hemispheric PISA models. At the same time, semiquantitative methods proved to be practice and valid techniques for the evaluation of the degree of mitral valve insufficiency.