M-mode echocardiographic weight based ratio indices in dogs having renal diseases

Kidney diseases are fairly common in dogs and are often associated with poor prognosis in later stages. A complex interplay between the renal and cardiovascular systems exists in both health and disease. Most of the animals having renal diseases have also been observed to have cardiac abnormalities and vice versa. Therefore, this echocardiographic study was planned to understand and define the extent of structural cardiac changes in renal patients. To neutralize the effect of body weight on the measured parameters, weight-based indices were calculated. All the structural parameters were divided by the weight based aortic diameter to obtain the weight-based ratio indices, which were independent of body weight and showed no significant difference between the groups and also found within the normal reference ranges. Therefore, on the basis of results, it was concluded that renal diseases did not cause any cardiac structural change in early disease progression.