This week’s case is a 7-year-old male neutered Domestic Shorthair cat with difficulty breathing. What are the two main findings?
7 year old Domestic Shorthair
Teaching and learning about veterinary diagnostic imaging.
I saw pretty much all findings on my own except the small trachea. After reading your findings and taking a 2nd look at it, I can see subjectively that is small.
Is there an objective way to assess the size of the trachea ?
Thanks in advance
Why is the dilatated oesophagus not a megaoesophagus ?
This is a very nice teaching case, because it shows the dangers of “tunnel vision” – when you’re presented with a gross pathology like that cardiac silhouette it’s easy to miss out on the smaller things. Nicely done.
As of the previous question – megaesophagus describes a syndrome of segmental or diffuse dilatation of the esophagus due to several causes including hypomotility and loss of normal peristaltic activity or obstruction. The radiographic sign is oesophageal dilation.