TONOMETRY OF THE FEMORAL ARTERY IN HEALTHY DOGS AND IN THOSE WITH CHRONIC DEGENERATIVE MITRAL VALVE DISEASE

Abstract Applanation tonometry is a method capable of measuring blood pressure in an artery. In addition to speculation about the reason for the variations in amplitude of femoral pulse waves in dogs with chronic degenerative mitral valve disease (CDMVD), in medicine, it has been demonstrated that many symptoms of heart failure in people are attributable to peripheral vascular functional abnormalities, and they are not highly associated with central hemodynamic parameters. Thus, this study aimed to verify the applicability of the vascular tonometry in dogs, to evaluate the pressure measures of the femoral artery in healthy dogs, and compare them with those of dogs with mitral regurgitation due to CDMVD. Moreover, the parameters established for tonometry were correlated with cardiac index obtained by echocardiography. For this, the data were obtained from 10 healthy dogs and 10 dogs with CDMVD with mitral regurgitation on echocardiography. We observed that the pre-conduction period of the femoral pulse wave was significantly lower in CDMVD than in healthy animals. There was a strong correlation between systolic pressure of the femoral artery with determining parameters of cardiac systolic function in healthy animals. The applanation tonometry of the femoral artery was an applicable technique in dogs.