Hands-on training improved LA:Ao image acquisition in students

A new prospective educational study in the Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care compared three ways of teaching veterinary students to obtain and interpret the left atrial-to-aortic ratio, or LA:Ao, on ultrasound: video alone, video plus in-person instruction, and video plus hands-on training. The study found that hands-on training improved students’ ability to acquire the ultrasound image, while video-based teaching alone was sufficient for image interpretation. The paper, by Kathrin Siedenburg and colleagues, was listed among the journal’s most recent articles on April 15, 2026. (vetlit.org)

Why it matters: LA:Ao is a widely used echocardiographic measurement in dogs, especially when assessing left atrial enlargement and staging myxomatous mitral valve disease, where an LA:Ao threshold of 1.6 is part of Stage B2 criteria. Prior research has shown veterinary students can achieve moderate agreement with cardiologists when using focused cardiac ultrasound, but image acquisition remains a practical bottleneck. This new study suggests veterinary curricula and continuing education programs may get better procedural results when they add supervised hands-on scanning, even if interpretation can be taught efficiently by video. (academic.oup.com)

What to watch: Watch for whether veterinary schools and CE providers shift toward hybrid ultrasound training models that reserve faculty-intensive hands-on time for image acquisition skills, rather than interpretation alone. (vetlit.org)