Towards standardization of echocardiography for the evaluation of left ventricular function in adult rodents: a position paper of the ESC Working Group on Myocardial Function
Cardiovascular Research
Abstract
Echocardiography is a reliable and reproducible method to assess non-invasively cardiac function in clinical and experimental research. Significant progress in the development of echocardiographic equipment and transducers has led to the successful translation of this methodology from humans to rodents, allowing for the scoring of disease severity and progression, testing of new drugs, and monitoring cardiac function in genetically modified or pharmacologically treated animals. However, as yet, there is no standardization in the procedure to acquire echocardiographic measurements in small animals. This position paper focuses on the appropriate acquisition and analysis of echocardiographic parameters in adult mice and rats, and provides reference values, representative images, and videos for the accurate and reproducible quantification of left ventricular function in healthy and pathological conditions.
Contributors
Serena Zacchigna
Author
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) Trieste , Italy
Alessia Paldino
Author
Inês Falcão-Pires
Author
Evangelos P Daskalopoulos
Author
Simone Vodret
Author
Pierluigi Lesizza
Author
Antonio Cannatà
Author
Daniela Miranda-Silva
Author
André P Lourenço
Author
Bruno Pinamonti
Author
Gianfranco Sinagra
Author
Florian Weinberger
Author
Lucie Carrier
Author
Izhak Kehat
Author
James Cimino
Author
Emilio Hirsch
Author
Dana Dawson
Author
Marco Oliveti
Author
Wolfgang A Linke
Author
Ilona Cuijpers
Author
Stephane Heymans
Author
Nazha Hamdani
Author
Martine de Boer
Author
Jolanda van der Velden
Author
Amsterdam University Medical Centre (AUMC) Amsterdam , Netherlands (The)
Christophe Beauloye
Author
Luc Bertrand
Author
Manuel Mayr
Author
National Heart and Lung Institute Imperial College London , United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
Mauro Giacca
Author
Florian Leuschner
Author
Johannes Backs
Author
Thomas Thum
Author
