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
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. [GRAPHICS] .
