Cardiac Screening Advisory Group (CSAG).
The group is a subcommittee within the Veterinary Cardiovascular Committee and is formed of volunteer VCS members who would like to develop and promote heart screening in dogs and cats in the UK. The group chairperson is Hannah Stephenson and other members of the group include Dave Fisher, David Dickson, Julie Hamilton-Elliott, Vicky Ironside & Chris Linney.
CSAG are working in many different ways to achieve this. Those in bold, are already in progress and the remainder are still being worked on but will be fully available soon.
Canine development days in association with The Kennel Club.
CSAG’s have run cardiac screen development days for Whippets and Chihuahuas and more breeds will be considered in the future. Breeders of Newfoundland, Irish Wolfhound, Great Danes, Boxers & English Bull Terriers have all expressed interest in having an official cardiac screening scheme. The days aim to explore the prevalence of cardiac disease in a cohort of dogs from a specific breed to facilitate decision-making regarding development of a specific cardiac screening scheme for that breed. Only breeds suspected of having prominent cardiac disease are involved.
On these days screeners work through as many of the breed as possible and perform an examination and echocardiography. For example in February 2024 Chihuahua’s were involved due to concern about a prevalence of early degenerative mitral valve disease in the breed. 49 were screened in the day by 5 CSAG screeners. A summary of the results is that 34.7% of the dogs screened had a murmur, 72.1% had more than ‘none’ prolapse & only one dog with no murmur had ‘moderate’ prolapse.