Echocardiography
Images of a pet's functioning heart.
We partner with Veterinary Heart Care in the Hampton Roads area. This specialist provides our patients with an on-site exam and expert diagnostic tools and care in the comfort of our office. Veterinary Heart Care is a cardiology specialty practice serving the animals, pet owners, and veterinarians of the Hampton Roads area. Dr. Herb Maisenbacher, a board-certified veterinary cardiologist, provides expert care to pets with heart disease. He travels to area veterinary clinics to provide mobile cardiac consultations, including echocardiography and ECG, making cardiac specialty medicine accessible to all animals.
The mobile nature of Veterinary Heart Care allows for convenient specialty services within the family veterinarian’s practice, helping eliminate the stress of travel for both pet and pet owners, and offering truly collaborative care for pets.
What is Echocardiography?
When pets experience heart issues, ultrasounds and X-rays are often used to make a definitive diagnosis. Echocardiography, put simply, refers to an ultrasound utilized for the heart.
When an ultrasound is performed, it shows us an image of the heart in real-time, referred to as an echocardiogram. From there, our veterinarians can evaluate the heart’s size and shape as well as the way it functions. Specifically, they’ll be able to measure wall thickness, examine the heart valves, and assess blood flow.
Echocardiograms can be used to detect the following conditions:
- Birth defects
- Heart disease
- Cardiac tumors
- Some heartworm infections
Like other ultrasounds, echocardiograms are painless, non-invasive, and usually don’t require any form of anesthesia. The most your furry friend will need to worry about is getting a patch of their hair shaved prior to the procedure.
If your pet has been diagnosed with heart murmurs or irregular heartbeats, call us at (757) 487-1333 to discuss whether an echocardiogram would be beneficial.
