We are very fortunate to work alongside Dr. William Brown, a board certified veterinary cardiologist who also owns his own emergency practice in Novi and treats all the cardiac patients at the Detroit Zoo. Well known for his outstanding abilities in cardiology, Dr. Brown comes to our hospital every Thursday evening to evaluate our patients’ hearts.

Your veterinarian may recommend a cardiac ultrasound (echocardiogram) if she hears a heart murmur upon physical examination. Heart murmurs can either be ‘innocent’ or ‘pathologic’. An innocent heart murmur can be caused by stress and means that there are no structural cardiac abnormalities or heart disease associated with the murmur. A pathologic murmur means that there is some sort of heart disease or structural abnormality present and your cat may need to be started on cardiac medications to manage the disease. The only way to diagnose a murmur as innocent or pathologic is to have an echocardiogram performed, in which Dr. Brown can actually measure cardiac chamber dimensions, contractility of the heart muscle, and evaluate blood flow.