A WERRIBEE cat is being tipped as making Victorian veterinary history, after she successfully adapted to life with a pacemaker this month.
Dr Carolyn O’Brien, of the University of Melbourne’s Veterinary Clinic and Hospital said it was a rare operation.
“We’ve never done one before and I am not aware of the other referral hospital in Melbourne (based in Mount Waverley) having done one either,” she said.
Dr O’Brien is the only registered cat specialist in Victoria, and Senior Registrar in Small Animal Medicine at the university.
She suggested Heidi, the moggie, should have the operation after viewing the cat’s ECG.
Dr Glenn Edwards fitted the pacemaker in a two-hour operation in February.
The owners of Heidi, a 15-year-old short-haired cat, became concerned about her after she began having fainting spells.
The fainting spells continued for four months but blood tests and x-rays showed no abnormalities.
Dr O’Brien said an ECG revealed Heidi had arrhythmia, a condition where the heart stops beating for short periods, resulting in fainting.
Dr O’Brien said operations on cats with arrhythmia was rare because cats that usually have arrhythmia have significant heart disease.
“Heidi actually checked out quite normally on the ultrasound,” she said.
“So, that made her a perfect candidate for the pacemaker, the other reason why cats are quite difficult to do is because normally you just feed the wires down through the veins in the neck, for people and dogs that’s the way we do it, it’s a lot simpler.
“Dogs have been successfully fitted with pacemakers for the past 15 years.
“But for cats, the veins are too small, so we actually have the leads clog up the blood flow back to the heart,” Dr O’Brien said.
“So what happens is you get fluid accumulating in the chest… and the cat then has to be put to sleep.”
She said Heidi was at home was now doing well after Dr Edwards fitted an especially small pacemaker. A child’s unit was fitted between Heidi’s abdominal muscles, with wires leading through the diaphragm, directly into the heart.
The pacemaker gives an electrical stimulus that keeps the heart beating.
