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Your pet may need an echocardiogram for many different reasons. But the most important reason is very simple: your veterinarian believes that something is abnormal about your pet's heart. The cause may be the heart itself, or something else that is causing the heart to function improperly. Either way, your veterinarian needs to understand precisely the current condition of your pet's heart. That is why he/she recommended seeing Dr. Johnson as an Veterinary Internist (Dip. ACVIM) and with his more than twenty-five years of experience practicing cardiac medicine.
Veterinarians can (and do) learn quite a bit about the status of the heart by auscultation (listening with a stethoscope). In fact, this is the easiest and quickest method to determine any simple abnormalities in the heart. By listening to the sounds of the heart, they can detect murmurs, arrhythmias and occasional irregular beats, and heart rates. However, the human ear is not perfect and many cardiac problems do not change the heart sounds in an obvious manner. Instead, vets can employ other more sophisticated diagnostic techniques to learn more about your pet's heart including an EKG (or ECG for electrocardiogram), thoracic radiographs (x-rays of the chest), and echocardiography. All of which Dr. Johnson can use to diagnose your pet's condition.
An echocardiogram is a procedure that uses ultrasonically to examine the heart. (An echocardiogram is simply an ultrasound of the heart.) To be more specific, this technique directs high frequency sound waves at the heart that reflect off towards a receiver. A computer translates the resulting data into an image of the heart. It works in the same general manner that radar detects aircraft by detecting radar signals reflecting off planes and submarines use sonar to detect underwater objects.
The sound waves emitted during an echocardiogram, although very high in frequency, do not hurt and do not damage the heart. This is an extremely safe noninvasive procedure. Your pet will be unaffected by the echocardiogram.
We have the latest and most advanced echocardiogram/ultrasound machines available and Dr. Johnson has been performing echocardiograms for more than twenty-six years.
An echocardiogram can teach us many things about your pet's heart. This information gives a very thorough and complete picture about how the heart functions. Although Dr. Johnson will use these details to make a diagnosis, the technical specifics an echocardiogram provides about your pet's heart are as follows:
- Overall size and shape of the heart.
- Size and shape of the atria and ventricles.
- Heart rate.
- Thickness of the atrial, ventricular, and septal walls and of the specific valves in the heart.
- Presence (including size and shape) of cardiac masses (i.e. possible tumors).
- Blood flow through the entire heart including its magnitude and direction.
- Sounds of the heart from any point.
- Relative tissue density.
- Pressures within heart chambers and vessels.
- Arrhythmias and irregular beats.
- Size, shape, and efficiency of heart valves.
- Presence or absence of fluid in the pericardium (the sack containing the heart) and the surrounding thoracic cavity (interior of the chest).
- Electrical activity within the heart (by using an internal ECG).
- And more besides...
An echocardiogram is a fairly lengthy procedure that occupies approximately an hour of time. From your pet's point of view, we will try to do everything we can to ensure his or her comfort while Dr. Johnson conducts the procedure.
Unlike people, pets obviously have a fair amount of hair. We must clip a small amount of hair on each side of your pet's body over the heart. Otherwise this hair will interfere with the ultrasound and result in poor diagnostic imaging. We use custom shaped padding to keep your pet comfortable while he lays on his side during the procedure. Two technicians keep your pet company and attend to his/her needs.
An ECG (electrocardiogram) traces the electrical activity of the heart.
Thoracic radiographs (x-rays of the chest) provide a wider angle snapshot of the chest than does an echocardiogram. Why take a radiograph (x-ray) of the heart when the echocardiogram provides so much information? Simply because different aspects of the heart reveal themselves better with different technologies. While an "echo" reveals the size, shape, and structure of the heart, a radiograph shows much more clearly cardiac enlargement, the heart's external shape, and its location relative to your pet's body. A radiograph also simultaneously can reveal coronary vessel structure and pulmonary structure (lungs) in the same image. (Often, cardiac patients have problems with the lungs as well as the heart.) The ultrasonic sound waves an echocardiogram uses do not reveal lung structure well (because they are full of air).
Examples of common cardiac problems are listed below.
- Congestive Heart Failure
- Mitral Valve Insufficiency
- Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy
- Ventricular Septal Defect
- Pulmonic Stenosis
- Aortic Stenosis
- Patent Ductus Arteriosus
