Abdominellt ultraljud av vuxna nötkreatur
en praktisk guide
Ultrasound is a diagnostic aid often overlooked by the veterinary practicioner who works with farm-animals. However, it?s use increases, particulary for breeders where ultrasound has long been used to evaluate ovaries and to diagnose pregnancy or disturbances in reproduction. There is much knowledge in how to examine ovaries and uterus by transrectal ultrasound, but when it comes to doing ultrasound of other organs in the abdomen the knowledge is more limited.
Cows are very large animals, so it is not possible to examine everything inside the abdomen with ultrasound, simply because the ultrasound beam has a limited penetration. There is also lots of gas inside the gastro-intestinal tract of a cow, mainly in the large intestine and the rumen, and that makes it impossible to examine the organs behind the gas since the ultrasound waves are reflected when reaching the soft tissue-gas interface. It is done relatively quickly, to examine all the described organs in this paper you need about an hour, and does not require a waiting period in case the animal needs to be slaughtered.
The organs that can be examined using ultrasound are the liver, bowels, reticulum, right kidney, abomasum, rumen, spleen and the abdominal wall. Using transrectal ultrasound you can also examine the uterus, ovaries, left kidney and the urinary bladder, but that is not further discussed in this paper.
This paper is the result of an outline of literature on the subject and an study done at the Section of Diagnostic Imaging, SLU, and it?s purpose is to give a guidance to diagnostic ultrasound of the abdomen in adult cattle, and to give a survey of what you might expect to see.