“Ultrasound investigation of abdominal organs in the eurasian buzzard(Buteo buteo)”

Ultrasound is an investigation imaging technique routinely performed in mammal medicine. In the avian patient the aerodynamic anatomy of the body with the presence of the air sacs makes this diagnostic tool a challenging investigations technique to perform. However, several organs can be visualized and checked in the abdomen of the bird, like the liver, the spleen, the proventriculus, the gizzard, the intestinal tracts, the cloaca and sometimes the kidneys and the gonads. In this work ultrasound investigation of the abdominal organs was performed on 6 healthy specimens of Eurasian Buzzard (Buteo buteo). The aim of this study was to obtain standard imagines of the abdominal organs in these specie of raptors and to gain knowledge regarding the normal appearance of coelomic ultrasound imagines in the avian patient. . The main acoustic window used was the liver and with this trans-abdominal approach it was not necessary to remove any feather. Abdominal organs of the raptors were observed and checked regarding their shape, their content and their echogenic appearance. The liver is, at the present knowledge, the easiest organ to be investigated: it appears well divided in lobes and its echogenic imagine pattern is similar to the one of mammals. The proventriculus and the gizzard can be visualizes both empty or filled with water previously given by forced feeding (20 ml/bird half an hour before the investigation). The gut was seen with occurring peristalsis. The cloaca was very interesting to observe: it appears usually filled with echogenic feaces and not echogenic urates. Sometimes it is possible to see the urates and feaces passing from urinary and intestinal tract to the cloaca. The kidneys are still challenging organs to check, although parts of can be seen both with trans-hepatic or lateral approach. Although ultrasound investigation in avian medicine it is still in its infancy, this imagine technique, so challenging in such an aereodynamics patient could really be a powerful diagnostic tool.