I am wondering if anyone has any experience with their pet rat having a heart rhythm problem or cardiac arrhythmia.
Riley is my amazing, loving and incredibly intelligent female rat. She is about two years old and is very loved.
About a week ago I noticed a lump under her armpit that appears to be rapidly growing. I know tumors are common in female rats and took her to an exotic pet vet. The vet I found is great and told me that she has done hundreds of lump removals on rats and that at it's current size should be easy to do.
During the exam she discovered a big problem though. Riley has a serious heart arrhythmia. Every 3-5 beats her heart stops and then starts again in the same pattern. I listened to it myself with a stethoscope, comparing it to her sister Alice's regular beats and the problem is very obvious. Occurding to my vet this is rare for rats.
My vet says that this makes surgery extremely risky as there is a strong chance that under anesthesia her heart will stop. But without surgery her fast growing tumor will become worse and quickly decrease her quality of life. In the second scenario I would probably need to eventually put her down. It is a complete catch 22 with my baby Riley.
The vet did an EKG (Riley being Riley, it took 15 min to get a decent reading) and from it believes she has a condition called heart block. The results have been sent to a cardiologist to determine it's severity, how risky surgery would be for her and if there's any treatment such as medication that would allow her to have surgery safely.
Has anyone else had similar experience with their rats having a heart rhythm disorder?
Also if you were presented with this choice with your rat, what would you do? Right now I'm leaning towards surgery since I would rather her go out fighting than suffer, but at the moment she is perfectly happy and her normal self and I want as much time with her as possible.
Riley is my amazing, loving and incredibly intelligent female rat. She is about two years old and is very loved.
About a week ago I noticed a lump under her armpit that appears to be rapidly growing. I know tumors are common in female rats and took her to an exotic pet vet. The vet I found is great and told me that she has done hundreds of lump removals on rats and that at it's current size should be easy to do.
During the exam she discovered a big problem though. Riley has a serious heart arrhythmia. Every 3-5 beats her heart stops and then starts again in the same pattern. I listened to it myself with a stethoscope, comparing it to her sister Alice's regular beats and the problem is very obvious. Occurding to my vet this is rare for rats.
My vet says that this makes surgery extremely risky as there is a strong chance that under anesthesia her heart will stop. But without surgery her fast growing tumor will become worse and quickly decrease her quality of life. In the second scenario I would probably need to eventually put her down. It is a complete catch 22 with my baby Riley.
The vet did an EKG (Riley being Riley, it took 15 min to get a decent reading) and from it believes she has a condition called heart block. The results have been sent to a cardiologist to determine it's severity, how risky surgery would be for her and if there's any treatment such as medication that would allow her to have surgery safely.
Has anyone else had similar experience with their rats having a heart rhythm disorder?
Also if you were presented with this choice with your rat, what would you do? Right now I'm leaning towards surgery since I would rather her go out fighting than suffer, but at the moment she is perfectly happy and her normal self and I want as much time with her as possible.