Equine Congenital Heart Disease

Abstract

Congenital heart disease (CHD) represents a small proportion of horses undergoing clinical evaluation; however, both simple and complex defects occur during cardiac development leading to many unique malformations. This article reviews cardiac development and the fetal circulation, describes the morphologic method and the sequential segmental approach to CHD analysis, presents a summary of CHD in horses, and offers an overview of lesions that should be considered during evaluation of horses suspected to have CHD. For many forms of equine CHD, therapies are limited because cardiac interventions and cardiac surgery are not routinely pursued in this species.

Keywords: Cardiac; Horse; Morphologic approach; Sequential segmental anatomy; Ventricular septal defect; Veterinary.