Speckle tracking echocardiography in cats with arterial thromboembolism

Two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) is a new approach developed for cardiac imaging that provides a better assessment of regional and global myocardial abnormalities than standard echocardiography techniques. The study's goal was to evaluate regional radial strain variables in the left ventricle using 2D-STE in cats with ATE. The research included ten clinically healthy cats (the control group) and ten cats with ATE (the study group). Cats with ATE which diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) were divided into both intraventricular septum (IVS) and left vetricular (LV) hypertrophy (IVS-HCM, n:5) and only LV free wall hypertrophy (LV-HCM, n:5) groups. Compared to the control group, cats in the LV-HCM and IVS-HCM groups had a thicker IVSd. LVPWd were considerably higher in the LV-HCM group than in both the IVS-HCM and the control group (8.04 +/- 0.93, 4.9 +/- 0.4, and 3.91 +/- 0.17, respectively, P<0.001). Mid-posterior (MP) strain values in cats with IVS and LV hypertrophy were significantly lower than in the control group (both P<0.05). Values from mid-lateral (ML) were significantly lower than in the control group (both P<0.05). Our results showed that MP strain values decreased in the LV. Increased IVS and LVPW wall thickness is associated with a depressed MP strain in cats with HCM. Increased IVS wall thickness is related to low MP and strain values in cats with HCM.