Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica Research Calcification of intervertebral discs in the dachshund: a radiographic and histopathologic study of 20 dogs Øyvind Stigen*1 and Øyvor Kolbjørnsen2 BioMed Central Open Access Address: 1Department of Companion Animal Clinical Sciences, Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, PO Box 8146, 0033 Oslo, Norway and 2Department of Pathology, National Veterinary Institute, PO Box 8156, 0033 Oslo, Norway Email: Øyvind Stigen* - oyvind.stigen@veths.no; Øyvor Kolbjørnsen - oyvor.kolbjornsen@vetinst.no * Corresponding author Published: 21 December 2007 Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 2007, 49:39 doi:10.1186/1751-0147-49-39 This article is available from: http://www.actavetscand.com/content/49/1/39 Received: 26 April 2007 Accepted: 21 December 2007 © 2007 Stigen and Kolbjørnsen; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The purpose of the study was to compare radiographic and histopathologic findings with regard to number and extent of calcified discs in the dachshund. Methods: The intervertebral discs of 20 dachshunds were subjected to a radiographic and histopathologic examination. The dogs were selected randomly from clinical cases euthanased for reasons unrelated to research at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science. Lateral radiographs were taken of the vertebral columns after removing them from the carcasses. The histopathologic examination included 5 µm thick sections in the transverse plane, stained with hematoxylin-eosin and von Kossa. Radiographs and histological sections were evaluated independently. Results: A total of 148 (28.5%) calcified discs were identified at the radiographic and 230 (45.7%) at the histopathologic examination. Of 92 discs found to be calcified by histopathology, but not by radiography, the degree of calcification was evaluated as 'slight' in 84 (91.3%). All the intervertebral discs (n = 138) that were found to be calcified by radiography were also found to be calcified by histopathology. Conclusion: A sensitivity of 0.6 and specificity of 1.0 for radiography was calculated when using histopathology as the gold standard. Background Intervertebral disc disease (IDD) is the most common cause of neurologic dysfunction in the dog [1]. The dis- ease is most often diagnosed in dachshunds, and in 8117 canine cases of IDD, Priester [2] found 3898 (48.0%) to occur in this breed. The breed prevalence of IDD in the dachshund has been estimated to be 19.0% [3]. type of disc disease as protrusion of type 1 and found chondroid degenerative changes of the disc with subse- quent dystrophic calcification of the nucleus to be signifi- cant preceding factors. In accordance with this, radiographic studies have shown that young dachshunds with calcified intervertebral discs are predisposed to IDD [5,6]. In dachshunds and other chondrodystrophoid breeds, IDD is mainly due to extrusion of nuclear material from the disc into the vertebral canal. Hansen [4] classified this The occurrence of calcified discs is found to differ between dachshunds of the same age, size and coat variety [7]. Fur- thermore, a genetic factor is shown to be essential for the Page 1 of 7 (page number not for citation purposes)