Why Heart Failure Sneaks Up on us With Cats.

From Episode 167 on our ECC stream. With Dr Fiona Meyers.

You know how, when you diagnose a cat with congestive heart failure, everyone is always surprised, because the cat was ‘fine until yesterday’, and now it suddenly can’t breathe?  I always tell owners that it’s because cats are sneaky, and will limit their activity levels to match what their little failing hearts can cope with. Cardiologist Dr Fiona Meyers agreed, but also:

• Remember that some cats will develop pleural effusion with congestive heart failure, instead of oedema.

• Pleural effusion will not cause a noticeable change in respiration rate until there’s a lot of fluid. 

• Instead, cats compensate by incorporating an abdominal component into their breathing

• This doesn’t really help us with earlier identification of heart failure for round 1 of CHF, but it does mean that when you talk to clients about monitoring heart failure, you should also teach them how to look for abdominal breathing, instead of just counting breaths like we do for our canine patients.

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