Postmortem Diagnostic Imaging to Evaluate Idiopathic Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy in a Roborovski Hamster

Idiopathic cardiomyopathy in hamsters can cause death due to cardiac failure. The current case study investigated the capability of imaging to reveal possible cardiomyopathy in a dead hamster. To this end, the cadaver of a 6-month-old male Roborovski dwarf hamster, which showed acute respiratory symptoms a few days before its death, was examined by virtopsy to discover the cause of death. Postmortem radiography was not efficient enough to evaluate the heart due to postmortem lung atelectasis that increases lung opacity and diminishes the contrast between lung and heart. Postmortem computed tomography can be helpful for the assessment of cardiac size. Consistent with postmortem echocardiographic studies, an increased thickness of the left ventricular parietal wall and the interventricular septum and dilation of the left atrium were observed. Thus, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was determined by imaging and confirmed by the conventional necropsy approach. It showed that the cause of death was acute cardiac failure following idiopathic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.