**13. Future perspectives and conclusions**

Aortic/subaortic stenosis has a guarded prognosis if moderate to severe; however, efforts have been made in several aspects to fight the disease. First, screening programs have lowered the incidence of the disease (Bussadori 2006, personal unpublished data), and secondly, interventional methods have advanced and might give better prognosis for severely affected dogs; on the other hand, there is still room for surgical methods to take place in veterinary medicine and be more readily available. The genetic background for aortic stenosis is not completely known; however, several mutations, associated with the disease in different breeds, allow development of strategies for genetic screening which would reduce the risk for the disease in pure-breed dogs.
