Matters of the heart

Abstract

Heart disease is considered to be the third most common reason for poor performance in horses. Diagnosing and prognosticating equine heart disease is a challenge for veterinarians! Traditional methods used to evaluate a horse's heart include radiography, ultrasound and electrocardiography (ECG). However, this provides little information regarding heart injury at cellular level. To overcome this, cardiac troponin I (cTnI) has been identified as a more sensitive, non-invasive blood biomarker that may be used when quantifying the degree of heart muscle damage.