Elastography of the Intestinal Mucosa of Dogs With Chronic Inflammatory Enteropathy

The aim of this study was to determine the association between intestinal elastography and laboratory, clinical, ultrasound, endoscopic, and histopathological parameters in dogs with chronic inflammatory enteropathy (CIE). Twelve dogs were assessed and divided into two groups: six dogs with CIE (EG) and six healthy dogs (CG). Strain ratio (SR) values for the duodenum in the EG ranged from 1.01 to 3.3, with a mean of 2.105 ± 1.016, while in the CG, they ranged from 0.2 to 0.96, with a mean of 0.5667 ± 0.3133. For the jejunum, the values in the EG ranged from 1.19 to 2.76, with an average of 1.867 ± 0.5711, and in the CG, they ranged from 0.15 to 0.72, with an average of 0.4667 ± 0.2439. The results showed that the EG dogs had higher values in the elastography parameters than the CG, with significant differences in the SR of the duodenum (p = 0.0053) and jejunum (p = 0.0003). There was no significant correlation between intestinal elasticity and the variables weight and age of the dogs, either in the EG or in the CG. For the clinical, laboratory, and ultrasound parameters, there were weak negative and positive correlations between the variables analyzed, except for a strong, negative, and statistically significant correlation (r = -0.886, p = 0.033) between jejunal SR and serum albumin. Digestive endoscopy and histopathological analysis showed varied lesions, with no significant correlation with elastography values. It is concluded that strain elastography is a viable technique for assessing the intestines of dogs with CIE, showing higher intestinal stiffness values compared to healthy dogs. It was not possible to infer that increased SR suggests intestinal fibrosis and that mucosal hardness is associated with greater clinical alterations and complementary tests. Despite this, we suggest that the results found be applied in further studies with a larger number of animals, measuring more specific biological markers for the canine gastrointestinal tract and making better use of the samples obtained from intestinal biopsy and histopathology.