Métodos de medidas da espessura da túnica íntima-média da artéria femoral de cães saudáveis por meio da ultrassonografia bidimensional

Abstract

Studies on the periphery vascular alterations have awakened interest in aiding in understanding perfusion variations in periphery organs and tissues. In human beings, it is proven that disturbances associated to the intima-media tunica (IMT) exercise effects capable of influencing the vascular dynamics and the cardiac debit. However, little is known of such subject in veterinary clinic practices. As the femoral artery is thevessel mainly responsible for muscular blood perfusion of the pelvic member in animals, the influences underwent in the thickness of its IMT, derived from different systemic infirmities, cause alterations in the vascular geometry and dynamics, which might exercise cardiac overload. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the main objective of evaluating the clinical application of bi-dimensional ultrasound in obtaining the IMT thickness of the femoral artery in healthy dogs, by means of the manual and automatic methods (QIMT) and establish the normal parameters. In order to do this, we obtained measurements of the IMT thickness by means of bi-dimensional ultrasound of the femoral artery of 24 adult healthy, male (n=12) and female (n=12) dogs. With the results we demonstrated the statistical differences between the methods and that there was no significance in the comparison between the thickness measurements of the IMT between males and females. We can conclude that the methodology of this work allowed the measuring the IMT thickness of the femoral artery of healthy dogs by means of bi-dimensional ultrasound with different methods employed.