Echocardiography as a research and clinical tool in veterinary medicine.

Echocardiography is the accepted term for the study of cardiac ultrasound. Although a relatively new tool for the study of the heart in man it has already found wide acceptance in the area of cardiac research and in the study of clinical cardiac disease. Animals had often been used in the early experiments with cardiac ultrasound, but only recently has echocardiography been used as a research and clinical tool in veterinary medicine. In this report echocardiography is used in the research of anesthetic effects on ventricular function and clinically in the diagnosis of congestive cardiomyopathy in a cat, ventricular septal defect in a calf, and pericardial effusion in a dog. Echocardiography is now an important adjunct to the field of veterinary cardiology.