Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)
Hypertension in any mammal, including hypertension in dogs as well as in people, refers generally to persistently high blood pressure. Blood pressure is related to the volume or output of blood from the heart and the degree of resistance, or elasticity, of the blood vessels in the animal’s circulatory system through which the blood flows. Arteries are the vessels that carry oxygenated blood away from the heart; veins are those vessels that carry blood back towards the heart after it has given up most of its oxygen and nutrients to vital body tissues.
Hypertension can be either a sustained elevation in what is called systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, or both. Systolic blood pressure refers to the pressure within the blood vessels that is associated with the period time when the heart muscle is contracting, which forces blood out of the heart into the pulmonary artery (which supplies the lungs) and into the aorta (which supplies blood to other parts of the body). Blood pressure is usually highest during systole. Diastolic blood pressure refers to the pressure inside vessels during the period of time when the heart muscle relaxes between contractions, allowing the four heart chambers to become re-filled with blood for the next pumping cycle. Blood pressure is usually lowest during diastole.
In domestic dogs, high blood pressure is not especially easy to detect, because most affected dogs do not demonstrate any recognizable clinical signs as a direct result of their condition.
Blood pressure is regulated by a highly integrated and complex system of connections between the central and peripheral nervous systems. The central nervous system is made up of the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system contains the nerves and some other nervous system tissue that are located outside of the brain and spinal cord. The kidneys, and of course the heart tissues, are very involved with the regulation of blood pressure.Hypertension can be
It is difficult to assess how having high blood pressure actually makes a dog feel. Certainly, some of the clinical manifestations of the condition described below are associated with pain, discomfort and other forms of distress.Dogs suffering from hypertension may develop one or more observable signs, including:Most of these signs will be associated with cases of secondary, rather than primary, hypertension, and the existence of the signs will depend upon the cause of the particular
Historically, both primary and secondary hypertension have been only sporadically diagnosed in domestic dogs, due in large part to the difficulty of diagnosing the condition and the inconsistency in dog’ presenting clinical signs. However, more and more veterinarians are assessing blood pressure levels in their canine patients. As a result, a diagnosis of hypertension is certainly on the increase.Dogs with primary hypertension usually have normal results on routine blood work, such as a complete blood
Virtually all dogs with hypertension have it only secondary to some other underlying disorder or disease. Treatment of secondary hypertension will be based upon the attending veterinarian’s overall assessment of the nature and severity of that underlying condition in a particular animal. Various diagnostic tools and techniques, and resulting blood pressure measurements, can be evaluated by the veterinarian to assess the likelihood or risk of damage to particular target organs (target organ damage, or TOD)