Aspects of B mode echocardiography of the Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus)

Abstract

Although echocardiography is an integral part of cardiac evaluation ofhumans, dogs, cats or other small animals, being a useful, noninvasive technique, there are fewreports of it’s use in reptiles, thus the echographical limitations of the ophidian heartexamination. The ophidian heart can be subject to various lesions: endocarditis, myocarditis,infarction, pericarditis, cardiomyopathy, parasitic infection and tumors (Barten and Frye, 1981,Frye, 1991a, Jacobson, et al, 1991, Hruban, et al, 1992). The diagnosis in most cases is deliveredpost mortem. As in mammals, echocardiography should provide a noninvasive means ofevaluating cardiac anatomy and function in snakes.B mode echocardiography, or brightness mode, uses the principle that each returningecho is displayed on the screen as a dot; the brighter the dot the higher the intensity of thereturning echoes (Frye, 1994).The Burmese Python, P. m. bivitattus, is one of the largest snakes in the world and oneof the popular snake pets, due to their docility, therefore there is a lot of interest in obtainingecocardiographical data regarding these animals.