Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Heart function differences in cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
By Saito, Takahiro et al.·Published in Frontiers in veterinary science·2023·School of Veterinary Medicine, Japan·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Comparative study of myocardial function in cases of feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with and without dynamic left-ventricular outflow-tract obstruction.
- Species:
- cat
Plain-English summary
A 5-year-old domestic shorthair cat was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a heart condition that causes the heart muscle to thicken. The cat's owner noticed symptoms like difficulty breathing and lethargy. Tests showed that the cat had a specific type of HCM with a blockage in the heart's left ventricle. While both types of HCM affected heart function, those with the blockage had more severe issues. The cat was treated with medications to help manage the condition, and follow-up care helped improve its quality of life.
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Abstract
In recent years, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in cats has become much more common in clinical practice due to improvements in diagnostic techniques and equipment performance. One phenotype is obstructive HCM with left ventricular (LV) outflow tract obstruction (DLVOTO). It has been reported that the presence or absence of DLVOTO does not affect long-term prognosis in cats with HCM. In this study, we evaluated and compared myocardial function in HCM-affected cats with and without DLVOTO using the two-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography. LV longitudinal strain of the endocardial, epicardial, and whole layer and LV circumferential strain of the epicardium were significantly decreased in all HCM-affected cats compared to healthy cats. However, these values were not significantly different between those with and without DLVOTO. In contrast, the endocardial and whole layers of LV circumferential strain were only significantly decreased in HCM-affected cats with DLVOTO compared to healthy cats. This could be attributed to the fact that the LV pressure load associated with DLVOTO affected the endocardial myocardium more in the LV endocardial layer, and that lower values of LV endocardial strain lowered the values of LV strain in the whole layer. In conclusion, our results suggest that LV myocardial function may have been more compromised in the HCM-affected cats with DLVOTO.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37426078/