Heart Murmur In Cats Life Expectancy
This makes regular vet checks even more important for cats.
Heart murmur in cats life expectancy. For those with no signs of heart disease there is currently little evidence to indicate that treatment will delay development of HCM or extend a cats life expectancy. While treatment and prognosis are the biggest questions on pet owners minds who are faced with this diagnosis the treatments and life expectancies vary greatly based on the type of heart murmur and any accompanying heart disease. My cat Arthur has a bad heart murmur he is about 7 years old and very healthy my vet said as long as he doesnt get out of breath and is generally fairly active then he suspects that he was born with it and has had to cope with it.
I was told that his life expectancy would be no different to a cat without a heart murmur. While you can expect your cat to live its life span with heart murmur the life expectancy reduces to about 6-18 months if it develops congestive heart failure from heart murmur. Heart Murmur in Cats Life Expectancy Unless your cat is in immediate danger of heart failure the vet will treat them as an outpatient.
Some normal adult cats may have an intermittent heart murmur that shows up when their heart rate is increased due to stress. Heart murmurs are classified as congenital acquired and innocentphysiologic. If the murmur is caused by a functional problem that is treatable or by an extracardiac disease it might resolve over time.
If left undetected and untreated it can lead to congestive heart failure in cats. The murmur may first appear at 6-8 weeks of age and a kitten with an innocent heart murmur will usually outgrow it by about 4-5 months of age. Moreover the more advanced the poorer the prognosis.
Those that suffered from extracardiac health problems and structural heart diseases also have good chances of having prolonged lives. Most cats with innocent murmurs normally live long happy lives. Cats with this type develop it later in life.
The most common underlying structural heart disease causing a heart murmur in adult cats is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy HCM. If the murmur is innocent no treatment is needed and the prognosis is usually very good to excellent. Death can often result from emboli or blood clots and sudden and severe rhythm abnormalities.