Boykin
Spaniel Heart Health
Cardiac health has become a concern recently in the breed.
As of April 10, 2006, 178
Boykin Spaniels have been received an OFA certificate for
"normal" cardiac clearance. None have ever received a
non-passing grade.
Ethical breeders need to test and report cases of normal or
abnormal readings to national databases such as OFA to help
build a more complete picture of this disease in the breed.
However, there is a
significant question over if this problem is congenital or
genetic.
As historic accounts state, productive breeder discovered that
there was a dam and her offspring that were affected by this
problem, however those results were never reported to OFA.
There has been no evidence
to prove that the problem is spread throughout the Boykin breed
- but rather localized in a few closely related lines.
Are the non-passing
individuals from diverse lines not being recorded in the
database or is this really a problem that only occurred in a
specific line and was stopped before it was spread any further?
Only time will tell - until then it is best to test every Boykin
Spaniel's heart and send the results into OFA no matter what the
outcome of the test is.
READING THE OFA CARDIAC
CERTIFICATION NUMBER
OFA Certificate Number Key
Example: BY-CA250/18M/C-NOPI
·
BY
= Breed code, in this case a Boykin Spaniel
·
CA
= OFA Database, in this case Cardiac (CA). Thyroid = TH, Patella
= PA are also available databases
·
250
= Ascending numerical identifier given to each animal with a
breed evaluated as normal and given a number, in this case the
250 the Boykin to be given a cardiac number
·
18
= The age in months when the testing was done, in this case 18
months
·
M
= Sex
·
C
= Suffix indicating the area of specialty of the attending
veterinarian.
P = General Practitioner
S = Specialist
C = Board Certified Cardiologist
·
NOPI
= Indicates that the animal lacks permanently identified in the
form of tattoo or microchip. If the animal has permanent
identification, a suffix of PI is applied. the word Echo
appearing at the end indicated that the exam was does by
echocardiogram (as opposed to auscultation). |
