The delicate cardiovascular system in pets

While at the Fetch conference in Long Beach, California, Erica Brandt, CVT, VTS (ECC), hospital director of WestVet in Meridian, Idaho, sat down with dvm360 in an interview and explained what makes the cardiovascular system so delicate. She also shared one example of what could potentially go wrong with the function of this system and how this emergency can affect the patient.

The following is a partial transcript of the video.

Erica Brandt, CVT, VTS (ECC): I would say the cardiovascular system is a delicate system, because there are so many factors that affect it. So, everything from how the heart is beating, if it's able to do big strong contractions and actually get the blood flow that we need, if it's getting the electrical conduction it needs, through each of the different sections in order to get that big contraction that's happening. But we also need to think about things like volume status and red blood cell capacity. And we need to talk about things like systemic vascular resistance, and [determine] are the vessels responding to the different pressure that we have?

There are so many different things that can affect each one of those team players in this complex, that we can have a lot of different scenarios, trauma, disease processes, shock, that can affect anesthesia, [and] some of the drugs we use.