Understand Your Pet's Hypertension

In simple words hypertension is the abnormal elevation of blood pressure in the blood vessels. The main cause of it is the narrowing down of arteries. But apart from this there can be several other reasons too.

Hypertension does occur in cats and dogs. There is an underlying cause of most of the hypertension problems in cats and dogs. In cats, kidney disease is a major cause while in dogs this cause is less prevalent.

If you want to maintain a proper health of your dog it is essential for you to get him medically examined on a regular basis. And diagnosing hypertension in your pet is very important. But just measurement will not help, it is required that the blood pressure has been measured correctly.

To measure blood pressure of cats and dogs, an inflatable cuff is used. It is advised that to get the blood pressure reading accurately, six readings are taken and the final result is taken out by calculating the average of them. The first reading that comes out is usually inaccurate. For measuring blood pressure in pets, there is a machine that is automatic in nature and does not even employ the use of a stethoscope. The cuff of the machine is placed on your pets tail. This is done because you will get the most accurate reading on an animals tail. The machine has been named DINAMAP. For cats also you can use this machine, but there is specifically a machine designed for them which is known as Doppler.

Now you must be wondering what is the normal blood pressure of your pet. The blood pressure in cats and dogs generally depends on its breed. In effect, the breed factor plays a more important role in case of dogs. Besides this, the age of the animal is also crucial in determining the normal limits of the blood flow. Just like humans, blood pressure in animals rises with age. For cats the normal systolic/diastolic pressures are 160/100 mm Hg and for dogs they are 147/83 mm Hg.

In animals you can measure blood pressure from three different arterial. They are systolic, diastolic and the average mean of both of them. The female dogs have a lower blood pressure than a male dog.

Another important thing that you should know is that like cats and humans, dogs rarely suffer from the disorder of hypertension due to renal failures.