The Animal Heartbeat

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Season 3 of The Animal Heartbeat is all about the Veterinary Cardiology Icons - those who walk among us as legends of the veterinary cardiology world.

This episode features Professor Chris Orton of Colorado State University. Prof Orton has been a leader in the field of canine heart surgery for over thirty years, having worked to develop both open heart surgery techniques on cardiopulmonary bypass and minimally invasive techniques to treat valve disease. Chris is known as a cardiologist and a surgeon, but also has a strong bench-top research background, evaluating the mitral valve and the mechanisms of degenerative disease.

Join our hosts, Jose and Kieran, as they discuss Prof Orton's research experience and his experience over the last 3-years of trans-catheter edge-to-edge mitral valve repair, patient considerations and outcomes.

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Season 3 of The Animal Heartbeat is all about the Veterinary Cardiology Icons - those who walk among us as legends of the veterinary cardiology world.

This episode features Professor Sydney Möise, of Cornell University, CV Starr Professor Emerita of Cardiology. Prof Möise's research and education output on cardiac arrhythmias has shaped how many of us think about electrical problems of the heart, and she has become known as a pioneer of ambulatory ECG assessment of heart rate variability. Her recent collaborations with Wyatt Flanders, her son, has given the veterinary cardiology world free access to dynamic and 3D Poincaré plots in dogs, broadening our understanding of conduction system disease in animals.

Join our hosts, Kieran and Jose, as they discuss canine cardiac arrhythmias with a legend in their field.

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Our Animal Heartbeat live panel discussion in 2025 covers the topic of artificial intelligence and its use in veterinary and human patients. Our panel review topics such as how to validate AI tools, where AI fits in current medicine and how opportunities for its use are evolving, and should we worry about AI?

Our hosts Kieran and Jose are joined by a fantastic panel of guests:

Professor Virginia Luis Fuentes; Professor of Veterinary Cardiology, Royal Veterinary College

Professor Anurag Agarwal; Professor of Aeroacoustics, University of Cambridge

Dr Matthew Shun-Shin; Consultant Cardiologist, Imperial College London

Catherine Stowell; Imperial College London and founder of The Animal Ultrasound Association

This episode was recorded live at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as part of the 2025 Cambridge Festival of podcasts.

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Join Kieran and Jose as guests of the Portuguese Society of Veterinary Cardiology 2025 Congress, where we reflect on the past two seasons of The Animal Heartbeat, and look forward to the upcoming season 3. Our hosts bring their top lessons from season 1 and 2 guests, including advice from Gerhard Wess, Claudio Bussadori and Josh Stern, in front of a live congress audience.

Message our hosts, Kieran and Jose.

This is part 2 of The Animal Heartbeat Christmas Quiz 2024 - is you have not already done so, make sure to listen to part 1 before enjoying this episode!

Merry Christmas to all of our listeners! How better to celebrate the holiday season that a Christmas Quiz? Join Jose and Kieran, alongside some guest hosts - hand picked as future stars of the veterinary cardiology world to test our hosts' knowledge and approach to cardiology case material.

Jose and Kieran have each secretly set questions for the other. Listen to our hosts face the most public challenge to their knowledge of their careers - five questions of escalating difficulty, from generalist-level, through interested practitioner, to post-Residency knowledge, and finally verging on the impossible. Play along with the quiz using the links below to access the case material. You can even comment on each video with your thoughts before the final answer is revealed!

Enjoy the most tense episode of The Animal Heartbeat yet, as Kieran and Jose battle it out for the glory of proving themselves as Specialists in veterinary cardiology. Would they pass a Diploma exam after 10-years as cardiologists? Can their reputation remain intact? Will they still be speaking to each other by the end? Will they keep their jobs? There is only one way to find out...

Full video and audio of part 1 (available 25-Dec): https://youtu.be/QwF5fyCs-9o

Full video and audio of part 2 (available 26-Dec): https://youtu.be/vUR8jYIFIM0

Alternatively, review the media for each question separately on YouTube using the links below whilst you stream the podcast from your usual service.

Q1 for Jose (thoracic radiographs): https://youtu.be/FY8OzrlUG_Q

Q1 for Kieran (thoracic radiographs): https://youtu.be/EPmFc-tME-U

Q2 for Jose (ECG): https://youtu.be/nAXM_ywLFeI 

Q2 for Kieran (echo cine loop): https://youtu.be/1uKv4W-H5oY

Q3 for Jose (CT scan): https://youtu.be/vczoj8I9g_g

Q3 for Kieran (multi-modal imaging): https://youtu.be/ISeOrjdoWgI

Q4 for Jose (angiogram; available 26-Dec): https://youtu.be/0A7y0LIeIR4 

Q4 for Kieran (two echo cases; available 26-Dec): https://youtu.be/97eEOrQUdv4

Q5 for Jose (echo images and cine loop; available 26-Dec): https://youtu.be/ZMw-cLSqznI

Q5 classification system; available 26-Dec): https://youtu.be/WzRwb-iKtR0

Q5 for Kieran (cardiac post-mortem specimen; available 26-Dec): https://youtu.be/lVXIE4r7gsU

Message our hosts, Kieran and Jose.

Merry Christmas to all of our listeners! How better to celebrate the holiday season that a Christmas Quiz? Join Jose and Kieran, alongside some guest hosts - hand picked as future stars of the veterinary cardiology world to test our hosts' knowledge and approach to cardiology case material.

Jose and Kieran have each secretly set questions for the other. Listen to our hosts face the most public challenge to their knowledge of their careers - five questions of escalating difficulty, from generalist-level, through interested practitioner, to post-Residency knowledge, and finally verging on the impossible. Play along with the quiz using the links below to access the case material. You can even comment on each video with your thoughts before the final answer is revealed!

Enjoy the most tense episode of The Animal Heartbeat yet, as Kieran and Jose battle it out for the glory of proving themselves as Specialists in veterinary cardiology. Would they pass a Diploma exam after 10-years as cardiologists? Can their reputation remain intact? Will they still be speaking to each other by the end? Will they keep their jobs? There is only one way to find out...

Full video and audio of part 1 (available 25-Dec): https://youtu.be/QwF5fyCs-9o

Full video and audio of part 2 (available 26-Dec): COMING SOON!

Alternatively, review the media for each question separately on YouTube using the links below whilst you stream the podcast from your usual service.

Q1 for Jose (thoracic radiographs): https://youtu.be/FY8OzrlUG_Q

Q1 for Kieran (thoracic radiographs): https://youtu.be/EPmFc-tME-U

Q2 for Jose (ECG): https://youtu.be/nAXM_ywLFeI 

Q2 for Kieran (echo cine loop): https://youtu.be/1uKv4W-H5oY

Q3 for Jose (CT scan): https://youtu.be/vczoj8I9g_g

Q3 for Kieran (multi-modal imaging): https://youtu.be/ISeOrjdoWgI

Q4 for Jose (angiogram; available 26-Dec)

Q4 for Kieran (two echo cases; available 26-Dec)

Q5 for Jose (echo images and cine loop; available 26-Dec)

Q5 classification system; available 26-Dec)

Q5 for Kieran (cardiac post-mortem specimen; available 26-Dec)

Message our hosts, Kieran and Jose.

Hallowe'en is a time for bringing people together and sharing scary stories. Did you ever hear the one about the young, newlywed couple who broke down on the country road by the old psychiatric hospital...? No need to worry - this strictly scientific discussion sees Kieran and Jose share stories of the most terrifying heart conditions that they know of. The recording was plagued by unexplained technical difficulties... Jose was was delayed by a closed motorway, and Kieran was recording from a possibly haunted house. Add to that a specially remixed theme tune, and you can't help be in the Hallowe'en spirit after listening to our final FINAL episode of season 2.

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Mitral valve disease is the most common heart disease diagnosed in dogs. Our understanding of it affects how we manage a wide range of scenarios, from asymptomatic heart murmurs detected at annual vaccination, to patients with respiratory signs or those about to undergo sedation or anaesthesia, or simply receive fluid therapy. Join Professor Michele Borgarelli, from the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, as he speaks to Kieran and Jose about an innovative dataset on over 6000 dogs with mitral valve disease, the LOOK-Mitral Registry, and how research like this can inform decision making in the clinic.

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Vets understand that the cornerstone of treatment for congestive heart failure in animals is the use of loop diuretics, such as furosemide. But resistance occurs in all patients over time, and intensification of diuretic treatment is a vital part of managing patients with clinical signs - both for left- and right-sided manifestations of disease. How are we best to approach this, and what can we do when using diuretic drugs to make the best decisions that will have positive benefits for our patients? Join Jose and Kieran as they welcome Prof Mark Oyama, from the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss strategic use of diuretic drugs in the clinic and the most up to date research on how to judge diuretic efficacy in acute and chronic heart failure patients.

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As veterinary cardiologists, we rely on ultrasound every day to assess cardiac structure and function. Whilst important for owners to understand the cause of a murmur or clinical signs, we use echo to make critical decisions about when and how to treat, and inform conversations with owners about prognosis. The impact of echo on the lives of our patients is greater than anything else we do. But it may not be as accurate as you think... Learn how to best use echocardiography to make decisions, and which echo measurements may be best to select for accuracy, by joining Jose and Kieran as they speak to Dr Lance Visser, Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, about his research work in veterinary echo and his advice on how best to use this fundamental tool.