Case summary A 5-month-old intact female Scottish Fold cat was presented for cardiac evaluation.Careful auscultation detected a slight systolic murmur (Levine Hutch I/VI).The findings of electrocardiography, thoracic radiography, non-invasive blood pressure measurements and conventional echocardiographic studies were unremarkable.
However, two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography revealed abnormalities in myocardial deformations, including decreased early-to-late diastolic strain rate ratios in longitudinal, radial and circumferential directions, and deteriorated segmental systolic longitudinal strain.At the follow-up examinations, the cat exhibited echocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy and was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using conventional echocardiography.Relevance and novel information This is the first report on the use of two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography for the early detection of myocardial dysfunction in a cat with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; the myocardial dysfunction was detected before the development of hypertrophy.
The findings from this case suggest that two-dimensional GENTLE speckle tracking echocardiography can be useful for myocardial assessment when conventional echocardiographic and Doppler findings are ambiguous.