Serial evaluation of cardiac biomarker NT-proBNP with speckle tracking echocardiography in a 6-year-old Golden Retriever dog with subaortic stenosis and dilated cardiomyopathy

摘要

Philips Medical Systems, Best, the Netherlands). 2D cine loops of parasternal or apical view with three or more consecutive cardiac cycles and high frame rates (40-60 frames/s) were stored digitally for subsequent offline analysis. LV myocardium was sufficiently visualized by careful acquisition of 2D views. The software automatically selected a starting reference image which began with the R-wave of the electrocardiogram. Then, the bilateral annuli and the apex of the LV myocardial wall were manually selected by the investigator. The endocardial border of the myocardium was automat- ically traced by the software, designating a region of interest (ROI). If necessary, the investigator manually corrected the ROI to incorporate the entire endocar- dial surface without any artifacts. The investigator ensured that myocardial movement was visually synchronized with the ROI for the entire cardiac cycle. The ROI was divided into six segments and the segmental values were averaged to obtain mean LV strain and strain rate. The velocity, strain and strain rate values in this case were the peak values on the respective mean curves. The LV radial velocity (RV) and radial FS (RFS) were analyzed by 2D-STE from standard right-parasternal short-axis view at the mid-ventricular level (papillary muscle level).