Diagnostics

Animal Kind Veterinary Hospital can do many tests to diagnose your pet’s health conditions and get the results for you with a short wait. Because our pets cannot speak to us in words when they have an illness or injury, being able to perform accurate diagnostic tests means that appropriate treatment for your pet can be started much more quickly. Early diagnosis and treatment can make an enormous difference in how your pet responds to treatment and contribute to his or her longevity and quality of life.

LABORATORY TESTS BENEFIT YOUR PET

Blood tests are a major part of finding out what is wrong with your pet. They are especially valuable for pre-anesthetic testing if your pet is about to undergo surgery, as well as for evaluating your pet if there is an emergency. These tests provide you with peace of mind and give us important physiological information about your pet.

Performed at regular intervals during wellness exams, some of these tests will establish a baseline for your pet so that we can easily see if something is unusual during a later examination. Others will help us to know that a treatment should be initiated or if other tests need to be done.

DIGITAL RADIOGRAPHY AND X-RAY IMAGES OF YOUR PET

Sometimes we are unable to determine from a hands-on examination what may be troubling your pet. Animal Kind Veterinary Hospital uses state-of-the-art noninvasive digital radiology to help diagnose many pet illnesses and injuries. The specialists we work with, board-certified radiologists, are available to read our X-rays to ensure accuracy.

A radiograph can be made of any part of the body. Digital radiography uses less radiation and, because it doesn’t use old-style photographic film, the results are available quickly. The image is captured digitally and can easily be manipulated to enhance detail. Digital X-rays are simple to transmit electronically if we need the assistance of a specialist or another set of eyes.

HEART HEALTH FOR ALL STAGES OF YOUR PET’S LIFE

Congenital heart disease from a birth defect may be fatal to puppies under the age of one year. However, acquired heart disease that develops later in your pet’s life is much more common and accounts for most of the cases of heart disease in pets. Animal Kind Veterinary Hospital can help diagnose and treat heart conditions in your beloved pet.

It can be easy to miss the symptoms of heart disease, because some of them don’t become apparent until your dog or cat is older. In addition, some breeds are more susceptible than others. That’s another reason why regular check-ups are so important to monitor what is normal for your pet and what might signal a health problem.

Heart disease in dogs may be caused by a physical abnormality, an infection, or even a parasite.

• Parts of the heart valve can thicken, making it difficult for them to close and allowing blood to leak backwards through the heart. This limits getting oxygenated blood to the body.
• Myocarditis is a disease of the heart muscle.
• An arrhythmia is an irregular heartbeat, which most typically is caused by a problem with the electrical impulses that affect the way your pet’s heart beats.
• Heartworm disease is a very serious parasite infestation transmitted from dog to dog by mosquitoes. This parasite can spread through your pet’s body and damage blood vessels in the lungs and cause heart failure.
• Feline Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy is one of the most common heart problems with cats. This condition causes some of the muscle and walls of the heart to thicken. The heart becomes weak because it can’t expand and contract well. Blood clots can form, blocking the artery that allows blood flow to your cat’s back legs.

DIAGNOSING AND TREATING PET HEART DISEASE

To diagnose heart disease, we begin with you. Because your pet cannot speak to us in words to describe his or her symptoms, we rely on your observations. The most common signs of heart disease that you may see are coughing and breathing difficulties. Your pet might become tired after only a short playtime, be restless, sleep more than he or she usually does, lose weight, or develop abdominal swelling.

We do a thorough hands-on examination that includes checking your pet’s weight and listening to the heart. In addition to the physical exam, we may perform several noninvasive diagnostic tests to confirm what we hear.

• Electrocardiogram (ECG) records the heartbeat so that we can detect irregular heartbeats, also called an arrhythmia.
• X-ray images enable us to see abnormalities in the size or shape of the heart.
• Ultrasound, also called an echocardiogram, uses sound waves to give us information about the size of the heart and what the structure, for example the valves, looks like.

Most pets are treated with medication to control their symptoms or slow disease progression. A special diet may be prescribed as part of the treatment for heart disease and for weight control. The risk for heartworm infection can be reduced by giving your pet a monthly preventive treatment that we will prescribe. This medication kills heartworm larvae before they mature.

As part of your pet’s care team, remember that regular check-ups help us to know what is normal for your pet and help us to make the right diagnosis so that we may begin effective treatment as soon as possible.

ELECTROCARDIOLOGY (ECG) AND ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY (ECHO) HELP DIAGNOSE PET HEART DISEASE

Because early diagnosis is so important to effectively treat heart disease in pets, Animal Kind Veterinary Hospital is pleased to be able to offer the most modern diagnostic methods. The electrocardiogram (ECG) and echocardiogram (ECHO) recordings assess the heart rate, rhythm, and potential irregularities (arrhythmias).