Evaluation of clinical usefulness of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography as an early diagnostic method to detect renal dysfunction in dogs

慢性肾脏病（CKD）是犬、猫的常见病之一。然而，目前可用的肾功能检查诊断敏感性差，因此需要建立一种非侵入性的方法来早期预测肾损害。为探讨定量超声造影（contrast-enhanced ultrasound，CEUS）检测肾脏血流变化的可行性，本研究首先对6只健康犬的正常肾脏进行了CEUS图像增强，然后对CKD犬进行了CEUS检测。晚期CKD犬与健康犬的血流灌注参数存在差异，而早期CKD犬的血流灌注参数无明显变化。

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of common disease in dogs and cats. However, current available renal functional tests have poor diagnostic sensitivity, so there is a need to establish a non-invassive method to predict renal damage earlier. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility using quantitative contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) to detect changes in renal blood flow related to renal dysfunction.We firstly characterized the image enhancement of the normal canine kidney using 6 healthy dogs, and secondaly we investigated the feasibility of CEUS in dogs with CKD. Differences in perfusion parameters were present between the dogs with advanced CKD and healthy dogs, whereas no perfusion chenges were seen in dogs with early stage of CKD.