Research Communications of the 24th ECVIM-CA Congress

This study was funded through IDEXX and the University of Florida College of veterinary medicine resident grant competition. We acquired 2D echocardiographic cineloops from the left apical 4-chamber view optimized for the LA, and analyzed atrial longitudinal strain (St) and strain rate (SR) in 27 dogs (10 healthy dogs and 17 dogs with MMVD -5 ACVIM Stage B1, 5 Stage B2 and 7 Stage C). Endocardial LA STE curves were obtained and peak atrial longitudinal strain (PALS), peak atrial contraction strain (PACS), conduit atrial longitudinal strain (CALS); PALS-PACS) and contraction strain index (CSI -PACS/PALS*100) were calculated. LA SR curves were similarly obtained to determine the peak positive strain rate (SRs) during left ventricle systole, the first negative peak strain rate (SRe) during early diastole and the second negative peak strain rate (SRa) during atrial contraction. For all variables, a mean of 3 measures was used for the statistical analysis. We compared each of these variables between each ACVIM stage by Kruskal-Wallis tests and post-hoc pairwise comparisons, with comparison-wise a=0.05.