Catheter intervention or surgery: cardiac interventions – when and how? This presentation gives an overview of cardiac conditions which can be treated or palliated via minimally invasive catheter techniques. The talk provides insight and general understanding how minimally invasive treatment works, and also demonstrates variations of common cardiac conditions to help with the understanding about limitations of catheter interventions.

Catheter intervention or surgery: cardiac surgery – when and how? Cardiac surgery in veterinary medicine has been slow to progress compared to other fields. It was previously thought that small dogs would not tolerate cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) which severely limited potential case numbers, due to myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) being the most common cardiac condition in dogs, and being primarily a disease of small breeds. Surgeries were therefore limited to congenital cardiac diseases as these are more commonly present in larger breeds e.g. pulmonic stenosis and double chambered right ventricle, and closure of patent ductus arterious. With the advent of interventional cardiology these surgeries are performed with decreasing frequency, and this presentation discusses when surgery may be considered preferable to an intervention for certain types of cases suffering with these conditions. In the past few years, mitral valve repair (MVR) surgery has been shown to be a highly successful management option for MMVD. For those centres performing cardiac surgery, MVRs now comprise the vast majority of cases and there are currently no interventional options available for this condition in dogs. The lecture also also touches on which cases make good candidates for this condition, success rates and the future for this disease management.