Echocardiographic Findings of Left Ventricle (LV-Study) in Cats Diagnosed with Atrial Septal Defect (ASD)

The severity of congenital heart disease can range from trivial to life-threatening conditions, and clinical signs might have no specific manifestation prior to sudden death. Radiographic and echocardiographic examinations of all kittens early in their lives are advisable due to the difficulties of diagnosis based on physical examination alone.

The current study aimed to evaluate echocardiographic and radiographic findings in a group of cats with atrial septal defect (ASD) and compare their LV-study with another group of cats with normal cardiac indices.

In the group of cats with ASD, medical records were reviewed for signalment, clinical findings, and echocardiographic data, as well as measurements in B-mode, M-mode, and color Doppler. In the normal heart group, all radiographic and echocardiographic findings were normal and echocardiographic data were compared with the same data in the group of cats with ASD.

We found that the shunt direction in all cats with ASD was left-to-right. The mean left atrial (LA)/aortic diameter (Ao) and IVSd were the only two LV-study parameters that were significantly higher in the group of patients than the control group. However, other LV-study parameters showed non-significant differences between these two groups. The mean IVSs, EF%, and FS% in the patients were higher than the control group, while the mean LVIDs in the group of patients was lower than the control group and the mean LVIDd, LVPWd, and LVPWs were almost the same in the two groups.

The results of this study showed that despite the defect in the interatrial septum of the patients, most of their left ventricular echocardiographic parameters showed no significant differences with normal refer-ences.