Heart Disease
Heart Disease in Cats Guide: Here you'll find in-depth information on heart disease in cats including its causes, symptoms, and treatments.
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In order to understand heart irregularities, it is important to understand how the heart functions normally. The heart is made up of four chambers - a right and left ventricle and a right and left atrium – that act in series to pump blood (and thereby carry oxygen, hormones and other nutrients) throughout the body. These chambers are separated, connected and surrounded by muscle walls and by valves that open and close in a
Heart disease in cats can best be prevented through annual veterinarian examinations and feeding an appropriate diet. In cases where the heart condition is caused by inherited genetic conditions or an anatomic abnormality in the heart, early diagnosis can help to manage heart health and prolong the cat’s quality and duration of life.Symptoms of heart disease in cats are normally not noticed until the condition is rather advanced, at which point severe heart damage may
Cats can develop a number of diverse heart diseases. The most common of these are diseases that involve hypertrophy, or enlargement, of the heart muscle, which is the myocardium. The general term for this in veterinary medicine is cardiomyopathy. Cats can develop hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM) and much less frequently dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Cats also can suffer from something called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, myocarditis and arterial thromboembolism. Some feline heart disease cannot
Veterinarians have a number of tools available to help them diagnose feline heart disease. Many of these are routinely available in a general companion animal veterinary clinic. The more advanced diagnostic procedures generally will require referral to a veterinary cardiologist or possibly to a veterinary teaching hospital.Heart disease in cats is usually diagnosed based upon some combination of a through history, a complete physical examination, a complete blood count and chemistry panel, assessment of systolic
The proper treatment for feline heart disease depends on the type of condition involved. Generally speaking, the therapeutic options include supportive care, activity restriction, dietary management and selection from a number of medications, each of which has its own pros and cons in managing heart disease in cats. New treatments and treatment protocols are constantly being developed, and a veterinarian is the only one who can assess a given cat and come up with the