In line with people, domestic cats who are 11-years-old or older have significantly higher blood pressure than cats of a younger age. A study found that blood pressure rises with age in domestic cats and this applies to systolic, diastolic, mean arterial and pulse pressure.
 |
| Squirt. She’s about 11 years old. She was thrown outside to fend for herself after her elderly owner died. Squirt’s the neediest of all and needs a special human for her golden years. She is a senior with arthritis and is FIV-positive, and she really deserves a forever home to call her own again. Squirt will paw at you for attention—she’s desperate to be someone’s lap cat and best friend. Note: the photo is from several years ago and it is here to illustrate the page, no more. I don't know if she found a home. |
Systolic blood pressure is the pressure inside the artery when the heart contracts to force the blood around the arteries. It is the high blood pressure whereas diastolic pressure is the pressure of the blood in the arteries when the heart is between contractions i.e. when it is relaxed and the heart's ventricles are allowed to refill with blood.
Also, the study found that cats suffering from clinical renal disease, which I take to mean chronic kidney disease, a common disease in elderly cats, suffered from higher blood pressure than cats who did not have the disease. The same goes for cats with hypertensive retinopathy, which is when high blood pressure causes damage to the retina's blood vessels which limits the retina's function and puts pressure on the optic nerve which can cause vision problems.
The study is titled Epidemiological study of blood pressure in domestic cats published on June 28, 2008 on the Wiley Online Library.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are always welcome.