Meet Eddie, a rather handsome 18 week old Border Collie!
Eddie came to see me this week because his vets had detected a heart murmur when he was a very young puppy. Although Eddie is very active and able to keep up with his mum and dad on walks, his murmur is so loud that you can feel the vibration of the murmur on his chest wall. Puppies can sometimes have murmurs that go away after a few weeks, but Eddie’s vets were very concerned that he had a congenital heart defect (i.e. a heart defect he had been born with).
Eddie had a heart scan, which showed that he has a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA for short). The ductus arteriosus is a vessel that is present when the puppy is still in the womb, which allows blood to bypass the lungs (which are obviously not needed until the puppy is born). Normally, the vessel closes at or soon after birth, but in Eddie’s case something happened to prevent the ductus closing. A PDA allows very fast moving blood to shunt between the great vessels of the heart (the aorta and the pulmonary artery) which puts strain on the heart and also causes the very loud heart murmur.