My dog died during anesthesia. Why wasn't her heart disease found?

I am very sorry your Missy passed. It is safe to say the the teeth cleaning under anesthesia 6 months ago was not the cause for this, especially since her pre-surgical exam and blood work did not show any abnormalities. Seeing that she was fairly old, there is a possibility she developed a heart condition in the past few months, or she also may have had a sudden blood clot that was fatal. The only way to find out would be to send her to a pathology lab for a post mortem. Again, I am very sorry you lost your baby. At least she did not suffer with a long painful condition.

Again, I'm sorry you lost Honey suddenly. One thing that comes to mind to me is a splenic hemangiosarcoma (tumor on the spleen). The dog acts completely normal while this tumor is growing (or shows only very subtle signs of illness), and then suddenly crashes and dies when the tumor ruptures (which they do). It appears to come out of nowhere. This happened to my dog. He seemed completely fine, then one night out of nowhere, he was panting and having trouble breathing. I rushed him into the clinic, and he had a stomach full of fluid. There was nothing I could at that point in time. Another option is she got into something toxic. I wish I could give an exact answer, but without seeing her in person, I can't say for certain, but I hope this helps.

I'm so sorry this happened. It is not likely an overdose of anesthetic. If that was the case he would have passed away during the dental procedure. It is more likely that he threw a blood clot post-anesthesia. The only way to know for sure would be to have a necropsy (autopsy) done on him.

Hello. I am so sorry for your loss. It is very hard to say if this was preventable, but quite likely, it was not. This degree of heart disease in such a young puppy would have come from a congenital birth defect, a fairly common occurrence in this breed of dog. If a murmur was picked up early enough, an electrocardiogram would have been able to pinpoint the problem, & the next step would have been open heart surgery. This was absolutely not negligence by your veterinarian. Birth defects do happen in animals, just like in people. Some are manageable, others, like this are sadly not, unless you go to extraordinary measures. I know you are sad about this loss. Please accept my sincere condolences & thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

I am so sorry to hear about your loss of sweet Hotdog. It sounds like he likely suffered from heart disease. There are a few different types of heart diseases that dogs commonly get like mitral valve insufficiency, dilated cardiomyopathy, and right sided heart failure (common with heartworm disease). Unfortunately since I don't have the full history and I didn't do an exam on him I cannot say for sure which of these he had or if it was a different type of heart disease. Most heart disease eventually causes congestive heart failure which is where the heart is not strong enough to pump the blood forward through the body properly and therefore it begins to back up into the heart and eventually into the lungs causing fluid in the lungs. If it was right sided heart failure the fluid could back up to be around the lungs and into the abdomen. Most dogs can compensate for this for awhile without the owners ever knowing there is a problem, but eventually they can no longer properly compensate, begin showing symptoms and pass away. A lot of times by the time you see symptoms, the heart disease is so advanced and there is no amount of medicine that can help them. Heart disease is such a hard thing to deal with and I am so sorry that poor Hotdog had this. There is nothing you could have done differently to prevent this from progressing. Hotdog knows you loved him and was lucky to have such a wonderful family. Please know you are in our thoughts during this difficult time.

Hello. I am so sorry for your loss. Unfortunately, it sounds like more was going on with your pet than abnormal heat cycles, & it was just poor veterinary care that she woke up in the middle of surgery & needed to be sedated again. Stress & pain may have contributed to her death, but there may have been some other underlying heart disease or cancer present that was just too much for her to recover from. Please accept my condolences on your loss.

I'm so sorry to hear about your dog's passing! Hemangiosarcoma is a nasty disease. Please don't blame yourself, as there is no way you could have known she had it - many dogs are acting completely normal and have normal physical exam findings, right up until the tumor ruptures and bleeds. Her heart murmur was entirely unrelated to the hemangiosarcoma, so even if you had taken her back in for her recheck visit, it's very unlikely that the tumor would have been found at that time. Abdominal x-rays and ultrasound is usually needed to diagnose it, and neither of these tests would have been indicated for her heart murmur. So rest assured, this was not your fault in any way. Again, I'm very sorry for your loss.