Cardio-Thoracic Ratio Evaluation of Cardiac Sihlouette Compared with the Vertebral Heart Scale in Cats

Abstract

The aim of the study was to compare the VHS with CTR and to asses the discrimination potential of CTR between normal heart size and microcardia or cardiomegaly in cats. The study included 125 cats, 68 females and 57 males with age between 1 and 17 years. The patiens were distributed in 3 groups based on VHS: Group A (n=31) cats with small cardiac size (microcardia), Group B (n=51) cats with normal cardiac size and Group C (n=43) cats with heart enlargement (cardiomegaly). There was a good correlation between VHS and CTR for the entire studied group (r2 =0.516, p<0.01). There was a statistically significant correlation between VHS and CTR in normal heart size and cardiomegaly groups (r2 =0.383; p<0.01), (r2 =0.339,p<0.05).There was a poor correlation between VHS and CTR in microcardia (r2 =0.164;p=0.378). There was statistically diference between microcardia group and normal cardiac size group (p<0.05) and also between cardiomegaly and normal cardiac size groups (p<0.01). Cardio-thoracic ratio is a valid method being well correlated with VHS. The CTR measurement can be used for assessing cardiac size in cats and can discriminate between normal heart size and microcardia or cardiomegaly.