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Cardiac disease in felines

© Betty Sleep

It is always heartbreaking, to lose a beloved pet. But to lose one suddenly, with no signs of illness that you would gladly have treated, is perhaps the cruellest way to be deprived of a loving companion. Many people find themselves doubting their care of the animal in question. Being only human, we often blame ourselves. One of the major causes of sudden death in felines, are cardiac disorders.

Despite some popular beliefs, these are not the "invention" of purebred animals. Just as many household pets can be affected as the cat with a pedigree. Heart disease makes no distinction. It is perhaps recorded more in purebreds, because the possibility of a genetic cause versus a hereditary one, can have great impact on a breeding program, and so more tests and post mortems are done.

In general, heart disorders are discovered by veterinary examination, which may detect a murmur or arrhythmia, confirmed on further testing by electrocardiogram and/or ultrasound. However, many cases of moderate to severe heart disease go undetected until a sudden collapse or death. Cats who fall over or become victim of sudden hind end paralysis, may have had a stroke due to a saddle thrombus: a blood clot thrown from the heart chamber, due to heart disease.

One of the disorders that has been the subject of widespread research, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is a thickening of the left, and sometimes right heart walls, and septum, due to the overproduction of heart proteins or sarcomeres. It results in poor relaxing and filling ability, so that the less blood entering the heart, the less is put back into the body. It may not show itself at all, until a cat dies suddenly, and on post mortem, is found to have disarray of the myocardial fibres, excessive sarcomeres, and a grossly thickened left ventricle and septum, effectively blocking the heart from functioning.

Cardiomyopathy is recognized in three forms: dilatitive, restricted, and hypertrophic. Restricted may be show itself as a result of distortion of the papillary muscle or chordae tendae due to inflammatory cell infiltration. Dilatitive, characterized by the enlargement of the ventricle and thinning of its wall, results in a loss of cardiac contractility, and was diagnosed as a dietary deficiency, generally of taurine. It is rarely seen now. The most prevalent form is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, affecting males more often than females, and frequently cats under the age of two, or over the age of six years.

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