[Echocardiographic criteria for the definition of ventricular dysfunction severity in aortic banded rats].
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to identify echocardiographic parameters that allow distinguishing different levels of cardiac dysfunction in aortic banded rats.


METHODS
Wistar male rats (90-100 g) were subjected to aortic banding (n=23) or a sham operation (n=12). The following echocardiographic parameters were evaluated and used to group rats into groups with similar characteristics using cluster analysis: absolute values and after normalization to body weight of left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVDD) and left atrial systolic diameter; left ventricular end-systolic diameter (LVSD); LV weight to body weight ratio (LVW/BW); three indexes of left ventricular shortening (endocardial fractional shortening, EFS; midwall FS, MFS; and posterior wall shortening velocity, (PWSV).


RESULTS
The cluster analysis could group aortic banded rats into two groups: mild (n=13) and severe (n=9) stage of heart failure. There was no overlapping among the values of the 95% confidence interval of the following parameters between the two groups: LVDD, LVSD, EFS, MFS, LVW/BW, and PWSV.


CONCLUSIONS
It is feasible to distinguish two groups of aortic banded rats according to the level of cardiac dysfunction using those echocardiographic parameters. This allows to perform longitudinal studies in homogeneous groups of rats with aortic banding and cardiac dysfunction.
Moreira
Vanessa Oliveira
VO
Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu, Unesp, Botucatu, SP.
de Castro
Ana Valéria Barros
AV
Yaegaschi
Marcelle Yumi
MY
Cicogna
Antonio Carlos
AC
Okoshi
Marina Politi
MP
Pereira
Camila Alves
CA
Aragon
Flávio Ferrari
FF
Bruno
Mário Batista
MB
Padovani
Carlos Roberto
CR
Okoshi
Katashi
K
D000818:Animals; D001024:Aortic Valve Stenosis / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D002303:Cardiac Output, Low / Q000209:etiology*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004452:Echocardiography; D017379:Hypertrophy, Left Ventricular / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000209:etiology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D018754:Ventricular Dysfunction / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000209:etiology*; D020257:Ventricular Remodeling