Uncommon congenital cardiac defects in dogs and cats

摘要

Review of a major textbook of human congenital heart disease demonstrates a rather long list of possible heart defects in children, many of which have not been reported in animals. By comparison, the list of common congenital cardiac defects in dogsand cats in rather short,generally including: 1) the simple left-to-right shunts-patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), ventricular septal defect(VSD), atrial septal defect (ASD), and atrioventricular canal;2)outflow obstructions - pulmonic stenosis(PS)and (sub) aortic stenosis (SAS); 3) AV valve deformities with regurgitation-mitral valve dysplasia(MVD), tricuspid valve dysplasia (TVD); and 4) a single complex defect-tetralogy of Fallot. However, in an institutional or private specialty practice to which young patients with heart murmurs are often referred for diagnosis, variations of these defects, different combinations, and a number of other less common defects may be encountered. The availability of high-quality ultrasound imaging equipment,and particularly the addition of spectral and color Doppler imaging to the more familiar two-dimensional anatomic imaging mode, has allowed recognition and characterization of such defects in a high percentage of young patients referred for evaluation of a heart murmur. A few of these patients may additionally require cardiac catheterization and angiography for a complete diagnosis.We estimate that up to 10% of the young small animals referred for evaluation of a heart murmur may have some type of unusual defect or more than one defect identified after complete evaluation.