Use of focus assessed transthoracic echocardiography (FATE) in the veterinary emergency room

Abstract

The use of bedside focus assessed transthoracic echocardiography (FATE) is widespread in human medicine, and the potential for veterinary medicine has only recently been investigated. Focused echocardiographic examination can be beneficial in critically ill patients compared to other bedside diagnostic methods, as well as facilitating rapid therapeutic approaches in the emergency room. The aim of this review is to discuss FATE and identify its main applications in veterinary medicine. In this context, FATE has proved to be benefical even when carried out by a non-cardiologist physician or veterinarian. However, a few references on this subject exist in the veterinary literature and there is still a need for standardization of this technique for use in animals.

Focused cardiac ultrasound examination in the emergency and critical care horse: Training for non‐specialist veterinarians and evaluation of proficiency

“…Thoracic and abdominal point‐of‐care ultrasound (POCUS) examinations are increasingly performed in the veterinary emergency room, but a specific FoCUS protocol that allows for cardiac assessment of horses currently is not available. 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 Specific training in FoCUS, including image acquisition, recognition and interpretation of important echocardiographic pathologies, awareness of its scope and limitations and assessment of proficiency, is strongly emphasized in human medicine. 11 , 12 , 13 Veterinarians rarely are trained to perform echocardiographic examinations at the point of care, and trained specialists are often not available in an emergency or critical care setting.…”

“…In such cases, FoCUS may be valuable to identify horses with cardiac disease, understand underlying pathophysiology, narrow the list of differential diagnoses, assess the need for immediate therapeutic intervention, and trigger further diagnostic evaluation. Thoracic and abdominal point‐of‐care ultrasound (POCUS) examinations are increasingly performed in the veterinary emergency room, but a specific FoCUS protocol that allows for cardiac assessment of horses currently is not available 6‐10 . Specific training in FoCUS, including image acquisition, recognition and interpretation of important echocardiographic pathologies, awareness of its scope and limitations and assessment of proficiency, is strongly emphasized in human medicine 11‐13 .…”

Polish Journal of Veterinary Sciences

“…For lung sonography these are mainly: Veterinary Bedside lung ultrasound exam (Vet Blue), Thoracic Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (TFAST) (Boysen and Lisciandro 2013), Point-Of-Care Ultrasonography (POCUS) (Ward et al 2018, Nakao et al 2020 or bedside chest ultrasound (Hew and Tay 2016). For heart examination it is focused echocardiography, Focused Intensive Care Echo (Hall et al 2017, Ward et al 2018, focus assessed transthoracic echocardiography (FATE) (Lucina et al 2017), focused cardiac ultrasound (Loughran et al 2019). They enable a preliminary diagnosis usually within a few minutes (Szaluś-Jordanow et al 2021).…”