New frontiers in equine cardiology

Nowadays, echocardiography and ECG recording are routine procedures. Arrhythmias are very common both at rest and during exercise but for some arrhythmias, exact diagnosis and treatment remains challenging. Advanced techniques, such as cardiac biopsy or pacemaker implantation, have become available but equine cardiology still lags behind, especially regarding techniques for cardiac imaging, invasive cardiology and advanced (invasive) arrhythmia diagnosis and treatment. In human and small animal medicine, invasive procedures strongly depend on visualising catheters by fluoroscopy, computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These techniques are disappointing in adult horses, which hampers further development of catheter-based cardiac procedures ...