Evaluation of a digital stethoscope for electrocardiographic recording in donkeys: preliminary results.

The research article revolves around the testing and evaluation of a digital stethoscope (DS) for recording electrocardiographic (ECG) readings of donkeys. Despite its wide use in other small animals and horses, the DS had not been studied for use in donkeys until this point.

Research Context and Methodology

• The researchers used a cost-effective single-lead digital stethoscope that enables simultaneous recording of electrocardiographic (ECG) and phonocardiographic readings on a smartphone.
• Previously, such devices had been applied to small animals and horses, but no studies had evaluated their use in donkeys.
• Standard base-apix lead ECG (sECG) and single-lead DS ECG (dECG) were simultaneously recorded for a minimum of 30 seconds for the purpose of this research.
• Heart rate, ECG waves and intervals, and the presence and duration of artefacts were recorded and analysed by the same operator using both dECG and sECG tracings.
• 37 donkeys were included in the study.

Results and Findings

• All the dECG tracings were interpretable in all the animals.
• There was perfect agreement between the sECG and dECG data when it came to classifying heart rhythm and P-wave polarity.
• Strong agreement was found between manual and automatic heart rate readings provided by the smartphone application, PR interval calculation, QRS complex polarity, and T wave polarity.
• However, no congruence was found between the readings of P wave duration, QRS complex duration and amplitude, and T wave duration and amplitude.

Conclusions

• The study concludes that the digital stethoscope is a practical, easy-to-use tool for recording ECG tracings in donkeys while providing good-quality readings.
• This is, however, only a preliminary study and further investigation will be needed to confirm these findings.