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Understand Your Pet's Hypertension |
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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.
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