RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS OF THE 34th ECVIM-CA CONGRESS

Early diagnosis of preclinical dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) remainschallenging in primary veterinary medicine due to the need for echo-cardiography and 24-h Holter electrocardiogram (ECG) recording. Acost-effective and readily available diagnostic tool to identify dogs athigh risk of preclinical DCM could optimize current screening practice.Vectorcardiographic (VCG) methods have not been investigated forthis purpose. We hypothesize that mid-systolic depolarization timedetermined by a new VCG method is a sensitive parameter to identifypreclinical DCM and correlates with left ventricular size & function inDoberman Pinschers. In this prospective cross-sectional study,129 Doberman Pinschers (106 healthy controls and 23 with preclinicalDCM) were included. All dogs underwent echocardiography, three-minute six or 12-lead ECG and VCG. Diagnostic accuracy of mid-systolic depolarization time for detection of preclinical DCM wasdetermined using ROC-analysis. Its correlation to echocardiographicleft ventricular size and function was assessed by calculating Spear-man's correlation coefficient. A mid-systolic depolarization time of≥33.5 ms has a sensitivity of 94.4% and specificity of 78.9% for thedetection of preclinical DCM (AUC 0.922, SD 0.028). Furthermore,mid-systolic depolarization time is strongly correlated with normalizedsystolic left ventricular diameter (rs = 0.77, p < 0.001), systolic leftventricular two-dimensional volume (rs = 0.70, p < 0.001), and moder-ately inversely correlated with ejection fraction (rs = 0.60). In con-clusion, mid-systolic depolarization time is a sensitive parameter todetect preclinical DCM. Further investigation of its diagnostic poten-tial compared to or in combination with other tools in a primary careveterinary setting is warranted.