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Getting to the Heart of Things
About the Course.......
The Courses for the Small Animal Practitioner CE Series is designed to present an intensive review of a specific topic. Our goal is to provide the most up-to-date information on diagnosis and therapy with an emphasis on keeping it applicable for everyday practice. If you have attended in the past, we look forward to seeing you again. If you haven’t at-tended previously, we invite you to join us this year and hope that this annual series will become a regular part of your future continuing education plan.
This year the focus is on CARDIOLOGY “Getting to the Heart of Things”. Heart disease is a common problem diagnosed in cats and dogs. It can be a congenital problem or acquired later in life. Patients with heart disease may present with an incidental murmur or in fulminant congestive heart failure requiring immediate emergency treatment.
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Clinical signs of heart failure are not specific. Coughing and respiratory distress may also be seen with primary respiratory disease. How should the coughing dog be worked up to determine if the cough is due to heart disease or respiratory disease?
How should a cat with an increased respiratory rate and effort be evaluated? Heart murmurs are often an incidental finding on routine physical examinations. What exactly is a heart murmur? How should a patient with a heart murmur be evaluated? What additional diagnostics should be performed to determine if the murmur is clinically significant? What guidelines may be used to help direct these clinical decisions?
Thoracic radiographs are the most important diagnostic tool in evaluating a patient for heart disease/failure. Unfortunately thoracic films can be frustrating to interpret. How can you get the most out of thoracic radiographs? How can heart size be evaluated? What breed variations affect appearance of the cardiac silhouette? What are radiographic signs of heart failure in the dog and in the cat?
Regardless of the underlying disease process (mitral valve insufficiency, hypertrophic or dilated cardiomyopathy or congenital heart disease) the end result can be congestive heart failure. What is the best approach to treating a patient in CHF? When should ACE-Inhibitors be used? When should diuretics be used? What are indications for digoxin or antiarrhythmics? What can be done with the refractory patient? Are there any new drugs that can be used?
There are two main questions which must be answered in evaluating a patient for heart disease. The first is whether heart disease is present and if so if it is clinically significant.
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The second is what is the best way to treat the patient. The goal of this seminar is to “get to the heart of cardiology” and make answering these questions easier.
Course Faculty......
Hattie Bortnowski, DVM. Dipl. ACVIM (Internal Medicine) Clinical Instructor of Small Animal Internal Medicine, Department of Medical Sciences, UW-Madison, SVM. She also operates a private mobile cardiology consulting practice.
Helio Autran de Morais, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM (Small Animal Internal Medicine & Cardiology) Clinical Associate Professor and Head of Small Animal Medicine, Department of Medical Sciences, UW-Madison, SVM.
Lisa J. Forrest, VMD, Dipl. ACVR (Radiology, Radiation Oncology) Clinical Associate Professor of Radiology, Department of Surgical Sciences, UW-Madison SVM.
Rosemary A. Henik, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM (Internal Medicine) Clinical Associate Professor of Small Animal Internal Medicine, Department of Medical Sciences, UW-Madison, SVM.
Heidi Kellum, DVM Second year cardiology resident at UW-Madison, VMTH.
Rebecca L. Stepien, DVM, MS, DACVIM (Cardiology) Clinical Associate Professor - Cardiology, Department of Medical Sciences, UW-Madison, SVM.
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