My civie has a heart murmur

Hi,

Haven't posted in several months because my computer has been down. Was just wondering what special care Amy may
need. Took her to the vet 2 weeks ago and the vet found heart murmur. Her blood work all came back good. She had a senior profile. She needs an electrocardiogram. I just managed to come up with the money to pay for it so I will be doing that soon.
Is this necessarily serious or will she just need special care?

 

A lot of murmurs are benign and cause no problems. They are usually graded on a scale of I through VI. Are you getting an electrocardiogram (electrical leads attached to body) and electrical signals graphed) and/or echocardiogram (looking at heart via ultrasound).

Here is a link on murmurs

edited to add link.

 

As Larry said, a lot of murmurs don't cause problems at all; my Gwyn was diagnosed with one when she was four months old and she lived 20 years. But I understand that other types/grades of murmurs may be more problematic, so getting it checked out would be a good thing when you can afford it.

 

Make sure blood pressure is checked also.

 

Hi

Unless your cat has an irregular heartbeat, if you have to choose between echocardiogram (sonogram of the heart) or an electrocardiogram (EKG, a tracing on paper of the heartbeat), go for the echo. This will tell you definitively what is causing the murmur.

 

Thanks so much for your input.