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Our beautiful puppy Darcy was diagnosed with a heart murmur when she went for her injection at 10 weeks old.
The vet thought it was a serious heart murmur and referred us to another vet for a ultrasound scan and xrays.
These showed she did have a serious heart problem and estimated grade 5 was given, we were then referred to the Royal Vet College, Queen Mother Hospital to see the cardiologist.
Darcy went in for more scans and the diagnosis was not good she did have grade 5 heart murmur the valve was not letting enough blood go through so it was swishing back the way it had come, and the heart was already enlarged, prognosis was not good. There was once chance she could have angioplasty, a balloon would be inserted in her back leg, it would travel through the body to the heart valve where it would be gently inflated to stretch the valve. The operation is very risky with only a 50 percent survival of the operation, and no guarantees even if she survivied the operation it would work, without the operation there really was no hope. So with lots of tears we took Darcy back to the hospital for her operation, thankfully she survived the operation and is now back home. 10 days after the operation we took her to our normal vet to have the stitches removed, he asked what we had had done to Darcy as he hadn't got the notes, (they were in the practice but a different vet had them, they arrived at his desk 10 mins later!), we told him she had had angioplasty, and his words were, ' so that think that works again do they they stopped doing it because it proved uneffective', at this point our hearts sank. Then the other vet came through with the notes from the RVC he read them and examined Darcy, his next words were 'wow that is impressive, I am so impressed' After examination he decided that her heart murmur had gone down from a 5 to a 1, which is very hopeful, however we go back to the cardiologist at the RVC on Monday when Darcy will have more scans and we will know much more if it has worked.
