Malaysia Veterinary Forum (Archive)

kraniumz · Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 25 Location: KL

I need some expert inputs here. I have read so many articles about both diseases but i am still a little puzzled about the diseases. I am going to use a recent incident that happened to me quite recently. I am not going to go through all the details due to sensitive info that might cause problems with other individuals so please bare with me.

My 3 year old pure breed male has recently diagnosed for FIP, and i was quite satisfied with the diagnoses and tests performed. I realize that there is no definite tests that can determine FIP, so i did not go for the more detailed FIP test. From my understanding, in the case of FIP, it is mostly sign tells, if the cat shows the symptoms and is suffering from the symptoms then it highly likely that is is suffering from it. The cat showed FIP symptoms like bloated abdomen, loss of appetite, and loosing weight. Besides that he had this abscess on one of his rear leg, another abscess appeared on the other leg a couple of days before his death. However, he never developed jaundice prior his death. I was given some antibiotics, but the general advice given by the vets (i actually went to 2 separate vets) was to prepare for the worst. He succumbed to his illness just under 2 weeks after the second vet visit.

In short, this cat seemed healthy when i first got him, he fell ill about 3 months later and i had never exposed him to any other cats or potentially contaminated areas. He seemed to me a healthy male, although i had noticed he had short breath at times, especially when i bathed him.

Fast forward few weeks later, i spoke to someone who knows felines inside out and he brought up the possibility of HCM. So i read some articles about HCM and found out that this disease too shows the same symptoms.

So my question is, can a cat that has been diagnosed and tested for FIP, might also suffer from HCM ?

PS: I apologize for the long post.

Dr Nat · Joined: 07 Dec 2005 Posts: 1834 Location: Klang Valley

In short, yes, a cat can be positive for FIP and yet suffer from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. But your description is not clear enough for us to make any assumptions here. The only way to be sure of what your cat has died from, is to do a post mortem on him. Another way, is to talk to the vet who suspected FIP in the first place. Get your vet to explain what tests were done to suspect FIP. Although you may not have exposed your cat to others during the 3 months that you had him, but he could have contracted FIP earlier on in his life.

varanus · Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 472

Sorry for the your lost. FIP is really something that is very frustating for cat owner especially those with many cats, cattery, petshops and vet. It is true there are no specific test for FIP available commmercially and there is no known effective cure. Prevention from exposure is the best. Althought there are vaccines available, the efficacy of the vaccines is still controversial.

For the treatment, it is very frustating to treat. Most of the time only symptomatic treatment. Treatment is also depending on whether it is "dry form" or "wet form". The best treatment in a multicat household is management. Get all the cat tested for FIP antibody titer. Separate them according to the status and manage them as separate group, means clean and exposed group. There is one controvercial treatment that we sometimes do, steroid treatment. As the problem from FIP arise from the antibody-antigen complex, a type of "allergy", steroid can help because it prevent further forming of this complex and damages from the body against this complex. But of course, there are side effects. Instead of letting the cat to suffer and euthansia is not an option for the owner, we do that. At least the cat can have some decent life before the END.

For the diagnosis, I'm not sure what kind of tests being done. Since you're satisfied, I'm not going to poke around. If the X-ray is done on the cat, the vet should be able to differentiate a HCM and FIP, although "dry form" is not as easy to be picked up from the x-ray. Blood test is also a relative good indicator for FIP due to the increase amount of circulating antibody, as marked increase in globulin. HCM can lead to formation of "saddle thrombus" in some cases and sign will be quite similar to stroke patient.