Your vet might order lab work for your cat if they suspect an underlying illness. During a comprehensive physical exam, we might discover previously unnoticed signs of illness that warrant further investigation. In such cases, we order comprehensive lab work to understand what's happening with the cat's different body systems.

A baseline lab test is essentially a lab test conducted on a patient when they're healthy. This provides a point of comparison for future instances when the cat might fall sick or if there's a progression of a known illness. It helps us understand if there's progression, if the current state is expected for this patient, or if there's something new or more concerning happening.

No, you don't need a cardiologist to diagnose heart issues with your dog. However, it's always an option and often a good idea. A general practitioner can diagnose a number of cardiac diseases, and for those that we cannot diagnose, we are happy to refer to a specialist.

A board-certified cardiologist is a specialist who's focused their entire career towards cardiac health. They're the gold standard, best practice person to go to for cardiac disease and management, even though many of these diseases can be diagnosed in a general practice setting.

The prognosis for dogs with heart issues varies depending on how early we find it. If a dog is collapsing or struggling to breathe, the prognosis tends to be poor, though with medication, we can give them some good quality time. If we notice just a murmur or some slight exercise intolerance, we can often have them on medication and well-managed for years.

While X-rays are excellent for aiding in diagnosis as they give us an idea of the general shape and size of the heart, an echocardiogram lets us look into the heart to see how the valves and chambers are structured. It can reveal changes that might not be picked up on an X-ray, so it's a very valuable tool for diagnosis.

A murmur is a sound we hear when we're listening to the chest. Typically, we'll find a murmur if we come in for exercise intolerance or a cough, and we listen to the heart and hear that extra sound between the beats. Or, we might pick up a murmur during a regular physical exam. Murmurs are graded from one to six, with one being the quietest and six the loudest.

The first sign of a heart issue in a dog varies. In some cases, a dog that used to be able to run three miles a day may now barely make it down the block. Another sign could be a persistent cough that lasts for several months, which doesn't seem to be going away, even though the dog doesn't appear ill in any other way.

Heart failure in dogs is when we're starting to notice not only the signs of cardiac disease but a decompensation, where they're no longer able to cope with it. Typically, we see that as a response to increased fluid retention somewhere, whether that's in the lungs, causing difficulty breathing, or we start to see fluid filling the belly. In the abdomen, starting to get free fluid in the abdomen is a really good sign that we've got some heart problems on the right side. In both cases, those are very severe and need to be seen by a veterinarian as soon as possible.