Diagnostic assessment of the small animal cardiac patient

Diagnostic tests are often delegated to veterinary nurses, but not all veterinary nurses are confident doing them, especially when it comes to the sometimes challenging presentation of the cardiac patient. Cardiac patients can present to the practice in a variety of ways; for example, as a puppy or kitten with a heart murmur, an older dog with a classic left apical systolic murmur, in acute life-threatening heart failure or a cat following a thrombotic event. Some patients will require gentle handling, either because they have little myocardial oxygen reserve, are in pain or because their temperament will tolerate little handling. All these patients need to be handled calmly and respectfully, using practice-friendly guidelines to achieve the diagnostic tests required. The importance of creating reliable and repeatable results when assessing the efficacy of medication cannot be underestimated. Guidelines for taking blood pressure measurements in conscious patients have been published (Acierno et al, 2018), and this calm and measured technique can be transferred to other tests.