Thread: Heart murmur

Mac is definitely one beautiful MC boy!!

As people have said already, the murmur may not be there the next time or could be but is totally benign. On the other hand, it could indicate the start of a serious heart problem and be worse in 6 months. The only definitive way to know is to have an echocardiogram done by a board certified veterinary cardiologist. From the listing I have, I don't see any vet cardiologists in San Francisco, but UC Davis vet school has a whole raft of them. If you absolutely, positively want to know right now whether Mac has any heart issues, you should take him there. Most vet schools actually have pretty reasonable rates compared to vet specialists in private practice, but we are probably talking $200-$400 for an echo. There are sure to be regular vets in San Francisco that will do echo's, but do not waste your money having anyone other than a vet cardiologist do it!!! Regular vets--even those trained in radiology--are simply not competent to recognize and diagnose unusual heart conditions. We learned this the hard way when a radiology vet specialist MISdiagnosed one of our girls has having "severe HCM." Took a vet cardiologist less than a minute to conclude that her heart was just fine (she does have a fairly rare but benign structural feature). One reason to wait a while even if you want to have an echo done is that 6 mos. is generally considered too young to recognize things like HCM.

The most common heart issue in MCs has been HCM, but some HCM cats have murmurs and others do not, so it is not a reliable indicator. The MC mix we had that died of HCM did not have a significant murmur most of the time, so it was not always obvious to each vet. What you should find out from the breeder, though, is whether they have tested their breeding cats for the one known HCM gene mutation in MCs, and whether they have had echocardiograms done on their breeding cats. When our girl was misdiagnosed with HCM I was pretty skeptical as I knew she was mutation free and her parents had been regularly echoed. The chance of her developing HCM was extremely low.