An Experimental Model to Study Resistance Index and Systolic/Diastolic Ratio of Uterine Arteries in Adverse Canine Pregnancy Outcome

The aim of this study was to describe the changes in the resistance index (RI) and systolic/diastolic ratio (S/D) of the uterine arteries during mid-pregnancy abortion induction in the dog. Sixteen 30-35 day pregnant bitches were randomly assigned to either a pharmacological protocol to interrupt gestation (n = 8) or were used as untreated control group (n = 8). Doppler assessments of uterine arteries blood flow were carried out before the initiation of the protocol and then every other day up to abortion (treated group) or parturition (control group). All treated bitches aborted 6 +/- 1.2 days after initiation of the treatment (while none of the non-treated bitches aborted). Pre-treatment RI and S/D did not differ between groups (p > 0.2) while average post-treatment indexes were (mean +/- SD): 0.62 +/- 0.1 vs 0.53 +/- 0.1 (p < 0.01) and 2.96 +/- 0.9 vs 2.23 +/- 0.3 (p = 0.01), for the treated and non-treated group respectively. Correlations between days to abortion and RI or S/D were 0.75 (p < 0.01) and 0.79 (p < 0.01) and, -0.78 (p < 0.01) and -0.73 (p < 0.01) for the treated and non-treated groups respectively. In the treated group, correlations between serum progesterone (P(4)) concentrations and RI and S/D were -0.76 (p < 0.01) and -0.59 (p < 0.01) respectively. It is concluded that, during induction of abortion, RI and S/D of uterine arteries progressively increased while P4 decreased.