Treatment usually requires regular oral medication: often dosing three times a day is required a procedure which in itself can cause significant distress for some cats. These procedures may be aversive (unpleasant) for the cats involved. ![]() Investigations of heart disease and heart failure often need to be extensive. It is also difficult to treat and some cats may undergo treatments lasting from days to weeks and may still end up with the cat having to be euthanased. Thromboembolic disease (in which a blood clot forms and blocks a blood vessel), can occur as a consequence of HCD, causing severe pain and distress. However, in severe and terminal heart failure, the presence of fluid inside the lungs (pulmonary oedema), makes breathing very difficult and laboured a condition that can be assumed to be very unpleasant. Most cats with HCM, do not have heart failure and have no welfare problems. The intensity of the welfare impacts of this disease depend on the degree of heart failure and secondary effects that it causes. Other signs of heart disease and failure are detected using diagnostic equipment such as a chest radiograph, electrocardiogram (ECG) and, most importantly for HCM, ultrasonography. hearing a heart murmur or an abnormal heart beat or rhythm. Veterinary surgeons may notice abnormalities on examining the cat e.g. ![]() This causes abnormal muscle thickness in a heart that cannot work adequately.Ĭats with heart disease but without heart failure will very likely appear normal to their owners. The normal unaffected heart muscle cells therefore have to work harder to compensate and, over time, they increase in size (hypertrophy). In HCM some of the heart muscle cells do not work adequately because of a genetic fault. The severity of the heart failure progresses and causes death either suddenly due to the heart failing to pump blood adequately around the body or from the effects of a thromboembolus (a clot causing blockage of a blood vessel) or after progressive complications caused by poor circulation and fluid build up in the chest and lungs affecting breathing. ![]() ![]() This thickening causes multiple problems and at some stage prevents normal heart function and heart failure develops. With HCM the thickness of the heart wall increases abnormally (Liu et al 1981). Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the commonest form of heart disease in cats and it is very common in Maine coons. (for more information click on the links below) Animals with the genetic mutation can be detected before breeding age using a specific genetic test and ultrasound scanning of the heart, it is thought that the disease could be rapidly eliminated by not breeding from affected animals. Heart failure causes increasing discomfort and malaise which can occur over a prolonged period and blockage of blood vessels causes severe pain. Outline: About 30% of Maine coon cats have a genetic mutation that makes it likely that they will develop hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – thickening of the muscle walls of the heart – and, in time, this condition leads to heart failure and/or other complications such as increased risk of the blockage of major blood vessels by blood clots. Related terms: hypertrophic heart disease, heart failure
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