Feline Emergency: FATE in Cats

Your cat is yowling in pain, suddenly unable to walk. This is probably a fate, a feline aortic thromboemboli. And here's what you need to know. Hello, welcome back to my channel. If you're new, welcome. Click there to subscribe. Hit the bell to sign up for notifications. Then when you click the link directly in the box below, I can send you a copy of my free book. This is a disease that I hated to see in a veterinary practice. You know, I get a call on emerge. Somebody seeing their cat is just yowling, super uncomfortable in pain. Often he's dragging both of his rear legs like he seems acutely paralyzed. There are a number of different names. It's now called fate or feline aortic thromboemboli. So what's happening is you're getting a blood clot that forms in the heart. It's leaving the heart, gets into the aorta, the main blood vessel leaving the heart. And then it lodges just up in here where the main aorta splits and in an area called the saddle. And what it's doing is then blocking the blood supply that goes to the rear limbs. A typical cat is going to be yowling. He's going to have paralysis. Most of the time it's on both rear limbs. You're going to feel they're usually quite rigid. And when you look at the toes, they're done. The feet generally feel really cold and are often bluish in color because you're losing blood supply to the rear limbs. So why is this happening? When majority of the cats that have these fates, these saddle thrombosis, they have underlying heart disease. So what happens is the heart's not pumping normally. Typically these cats can have a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. You know, these thick heart muscle walls. When that happens, some of that blood can pool in the heart and clot in the heart. Then you get that blood clot moving its way through the aorta, you know, lodging here just in front of the legs, you know, creating all these horrible signs. One popular stat says that in three quarters of cats, this fate episode, that was the first sign of underlying heart disease. But the thing to know in this situation is there's two big scenarios or possibilities. Number one, we know virtually all cats that have a saddle thrombus, they have underlying heart disease. But just because your cat has heart disease doesn't mean he has heart failure. About 50% of cats that have a saddle thrombus, you have this horrible episode, they have heart disease, but they don't have heart failure. And that's great news because then we have some other treatment options and we don't have to treat heart failure as well. We just have to treat what's going on with this thrombus. The second scenario, it involves a cat that has not just heart disease, but now heart failure as well. So not only are you trying to give medication, you're trying to do stuff to treat, you know, this blood clot that's formed, you also need to treat the heart failure. So because of that, and as you may or may not guess, I mean, it's really different prognoses. If you have heart disease and then heart failure, and you've got this blood clot, the average lifespan of these guys, the median lifespan is only about two months. But if we have a cat that has a blood clot, but they don't have underlying heart failure, just heart disease, then we're looking at an average lifespan or median lifespan of about eight months. Can a cat recover from this? So yes, there is treatment and I had many clients in practice and we were able to treat their cats. The first big principle here is really, really, really good pain control. It's such a super painful disease. So these guys are on narcotics, CBD, cannabidiol. It's another good legitimate option for additional pain control. The second big principle that we're trying to do here is break down that blood clot, prevent additional clots from forming. There's a new anticoagulant called Plavix or clopidogrel. Both options of this, ASA or aspirin, the only time it's really used in veterinary practice in our cats is to treat and or prevent these blood clots from forming. We're looking at doses about 10 mg per kilo every 48 to 72 hours. That would be about a quarter of one of these 325 milligram ASA tablets every 48 to 72 hours. Then the third big principle in treatment is then treating the underlying heart disease. Obviously, the cats and heart failure, that's different. You're also getting on specific heart failure medications. We know that over 90% of the cats, when they have a blood clot, one of these thromboemboli, they have underlying heart disease. So then majority clinicians are also getting these guys on heart medication, something like pomabendin or vetmedin, which has proven to be very successful for these cats, the HCM, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and likely as well as some type of diuretic, such as Lasix if you lose the mind. This is a crappy disease and when I look back in veterinary practice, I don't know how many cats I actually sent home with treatment. I mean, many of those cats, they ended up being euthanized. It's just so painful and it has such a poor prognosis. I mean, the stats aren't really good. I mean, it's reported that only about 50% of cats that are even treated for this disease actually ever leave a veterinary hospital. This then got me thinking, like, what's the biggest takeaway I can give you guys? Because it's such a crappy disease for your cat to get, so, so difficult to treat. So ultimately, what do you want to do? You want to prevent it from happening. And how do you prevent it from happening? You try to ensure as best you can that your cat doesn't get underlying heart disease. So I then want to give you a couple options that may help. Are they going to help? I don't know. I just know that it's better than, you know, not doing anything at all. And if your cat has a nutrient deficiency, maybe it can prevent your cat from developing cardiomyopathy or getting heart disease than getting these blood clots in the first place. Number one, I think you should consider supplementing your cat's diet with additional taurine. The taurine is the amino acid that is considered essential for cats. It needs to be in their diet because they can't preform it from some of the other amino acids. It should be added into their commercial cat food. But maybe your cat needs additional. Maybe there's not enough in that food. You know, in my supplement, Ultimate Feline Health Formula, I have additional taurine. But you can get taurine in many other forms. It's a very inexpensive supplement. You can just directly add taurine into your cat's diet. Then number two, of all the different supplements that have been studied to help ultimately prevent heart disease in the first place, and I've got gazillions of studies backing their effectiveness, is this, the omega-3 fatty acids. Stroke is a huge problem for people. There are scientist after scientist that have done an array of different studies to show that for people that are consuming higher levels of the omega-3 fatty acids, guess what? They have less incidence of stroke. So it makes sense to me that if you've got your cat eating more omega-3 fatty acids, they're gonna have lower risk of heart disease, lower chance than these fates, these feline aortic thromboemboli. I have an omega-3 supplement in the form of this, in the form of krill oil. It's a great option in my opinion. But once again, does it need to be my supplement? No, it doesn't. I just think it's really important that your cat is going to be on some form of good quality omega-3 fatty acid supplement. Thank you guys for watching this video. I hope this never happens to you or your cat. And if it does happen, I hope one, you can recognize it really quickly. Get into your veterinary clinic as soon as possible. It's not something you want to wait and watch and hope that it gets better. Consider some of those ultimately preventive options. So hopefully this never happens to ever happen to you and or your cat.