COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF ULTRASONOGRAPHIC, RA DIOGRAPHIC AND AFTER SURGERY SIGNS IN 50 BITCHES WITH PYOMETRA

Diagnoses of pyometra are specially based on clinical signs, clinical pathology findings and radiography. Ultrasound has been a new, only re cently available diagnostic tool. To establish some relation between r adiography and ultrasonography scans, fifty female dogs with clinical signs of pyometra were scanned with ultrasound and radiography. Latera l and ventro-dorsal views were obtained, and scored from 0 to 3 accord ing to presence of radiographical signs. On the other hand, this study tries to correlate uterine section measurements between ultrasound an d measurements of the isolated organ in 3 anatomic points after surger y: a) Caudal to kidneys, b) Lateral to navel, c) Uterine body, caudal to horn bifurcation. Lateral radiographs were more succesfull in diagn osing raised uterine volume than ventro-dorsal radiographs. The radiog raph technique was less efficient than ultrasound in distinguishing po sitive cases with pyometra. Ultrasound was able to detect 100% of the pyometra cases. Measurements of uterine sections larger than 900 mm(2) were correlated with higher values (2 or 3) in radiographic scores (p < 0.05). Correlation between ultrasonography and isolated uterus meas urements were 0.95% for all the anatomic points.