feline_asthma

Your Pet: Feline Asthma Felix is an eight year old cat living inside his house with his caretaker Alicia. From Alicia's account, we can say that Felix is in excellent shape and has had absolutely no health problems all his life. Of course, if that were the case at this particular juncture in time, I would have no reason to bring him up today. Felix has started to cough. Alicia says he will have occasional bouts of coughing and then be fine for a few days. Lately the frequency of these episodes has increased. He has most recently added another symptom as well. At times, he will behave like he is having trouble catching his breath. This too seems to pass within a few minutes, but again this behavior has increased in frequency. Alicia has already made arrangement for Felix to see his veterinarian, so our discussion may be passé at this point, but I will not let that stop me. First of all, we know that Felix has something wrong in his respiratory tract. How do we know that, you ask? Felix is coughing. A cough occurs when something is irritating the respiratory tract. This symptom, along with the fact that he has episodes when he has trouble breathing, focuses our attention virtually entirely on his respiratory system. A good physical examination is in order, which should include a detailed auscultation of his chest. Beyond physical examination, and dictated by both his clinical symptoms and physical examination findings, a diagnostic plan needs to be implemented. Almost without exception when dealing with a respiratory issue, chest radiographs will be part of this plan. One possible cause for Felix's symptoms that appears probably at the top of my diagnostic list is feline asthma. Feline asthma is very similar to asthma in humans and is usually an allergic disease process that causes some degree of narrowing of the bronchial tubes which carry air to the tiny sacs in the lungs called alveoli. The narrowing results from an allergic response to some antigen that is inhaled. This response involves inflammation of the bronchial walls and thus narrowing as a result. Logically, less air can be moved through the bronchial tubes when they are narrowed leading to more difficulty breathing and coughing as well. Depending on the severity of the allergic response manifested by an asthmatic cat, the result can be severe breathing restriction even to the point of suffocation. One common secondary disease process associated with feline asthma is bacterial respiratory infection either in the form of bacterial bronchitis or broncho-pneumonia. This sometimes occurs with asthma because with the narrowing of the bronchial tubes, the normal clearing mechanism that cleans material out of the tubes is compromised. This allows bacteria to linger and reproduce causing disease. With chest radiography, we should be able to determine if Felix has bronchial narrowing consistent with feline asthma and arrive at a presumptive diagnosis. Whether or not bacteria are involved would remain to be determined, however I will commonly treat for bacteria with antibiotics as well as treating the asthma in order to cover both bases. The goal in treating feline asthma is to stop the inflammatory response and to this end, we use anti- inflammatory medications usually from the catabolic steroid family. These are the corticosteroids. Depending on the severity of the symptoms, these can be administered initially by injection then given orally for some period of time. Cats that are in a life threatening breathing crisis will need hospitalization and intense therapy which will also include oxygen administration. It does not sound like Felix is one of those cats. There is another potentially very successful treatment regimen we can use in cats. This involves the use of an apparatus that allows for inhalational cortisone therapy. Some cats are quite tolerant of this technique and it has the advantage of treating the problem right at the point of action as the drugs is inhaled into the bronchial tubes. That said, as one might envision, there are cats that will not tolerate this type of treatment and will need to be treated in a different fashion. If Felix does indeed have feline asthma the prognosis for treatment is generally good however it is important to realize that this disease, as I am sure those of you who suffer from it realize, is not considered curable.