Don't Ignore the Signs: Quick Diagnosis and Treatment of Eclampsia in Pets
Have you heard these myths about eclampsia in nursing pets? Myth #1: Eclampsia only affects pregnant pets. Myth #2: Eclampsia is rare and not a serious condition. Myth #3: Eclampsia can be treated with over-the-counter supplements. But here's the truth: Eclampsia, also known as milk fever, mostly affects nursing pets and can be life-threatening if left untreated. It requires prompt veterinary attention and treatment. Don't fall for these dangerous myths – learn how to identify and treat eclampsia in your nursing pet to prevent fatalities. Stay tuned for the expert advice on preventing and managing eclampsia in your furry friend.
After listening to this episode, I'd recommend all pet owners educate themselves on eclampsia and its symptoms to ensure their pets receive the proper care. Early detection and treatment can save pets' lives!
What You’ll Learn:
Gain invaluable insights into eclampsia and how to protect your furry friends from these devastating health risks.
Recognize the critical symptoms of this life-threatening condition that every pet owner should be aware of.
Get the inside scoop on the diagnosis and treatment methods that can save your pet's life in times of crisis.
Explore the role of proper diet and nutrition as effective preventative measures for eclampsia in your pets.
Appreciate the imperative need for veterinary assistance and the potential dangers of at-home treatment for eclampsia.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"Eclampsia can be life threatening if it's not treated properly." - Tyler Sugerman
"It is really important to note too, that you should not just attempt to treat her at home." - Tyler Sugerman
Resources Mentioned:
Read The Transcript:
Tyler: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Vetsplanation. Today we're gonna be discussing eclampsia. This is otherwise known as hypocalcemia, which means low calcium or milk fever is another term for it. So listen in as we discuss the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention for this disease. If you have a dog or a cat that is pregnant or is recently given birth or you're thinking about breeding, this should be a really good one for you.
So listen in to find more about how we can help our moms.
Welcome to Vetsplanation. I'm your veterinary host, Dr. Sugerman, and I'm gonna teach you about veterinary medicine. In this podcast, we dive deeper into the understanding of what our pets are going through and break down the medical terms into easier to understand chunks of information. Just a quick disclaimer.
This podcast is for informational purposes only. This is not meant to be a diagnosis for your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or treatment options, please talk to your veterinarian about those things. Remember, we are all practicing veterinarian medicine, and medicine is not an exact science, so your veterinarian may have
[00:01:00] different treatment options or different opinions. This information I provide here is just to help pet parents to have a better understanding for their pets. If you like our podcast, please consider sharing this podcast with at least one friend or someone else who has pets. Now, let's jump into this week episode.
Eclampsia is a condition that affects female dogs and cats usually after giving birth, but it can happen before birth as well. This condition can be life-threatening if it's not treated properly. So it's really important to understand too, that this is not the same condition as what's seen in people.
We'll go over what this condition actually is. What happens is that the mother will use up all of her calcium reserves while she's producing milk. It usually gets pulled from places like her bone when she doesn't have enough on her bloodstream from her diet. If these reserves aren't replenished, so all of her calcium is getting sucked out, then it can lead to a drop in her blood calcium levels and then when they get low blood calcium levels, it can cause seizures, [00:02:00] muscle spasms, and even death. This condition is extremely serious. So today we're gonna be discussing everything you need to know about eclampsia and how we can prevent it in our own dogs and cats. The first thing to know about eclampsia are the symptoms that accompany it, because this is a condition that affects dogs and cats
in their brain, most of the symptoms you're gonna see are neurological signs, so some of those symptoms you need to watch out for are gonna be dogs who are lethargic or just really extremely tired. For cats, it's actually the opposite. They're actually more restless, like they're just running around. They just can't sit still.
Tyler: They'll be trembling or shaking, have muscle stiffness or spasms. They may not have a very good appetite. They'll usually have a really high fever because they're just trembling so much that their muscles are creating a lot of heat. They'll have rapid breathing or they might be panting. They can have pruritus, which means scratching.
So like they'll scratch at their face a lot. They can [00:03:00] have muscle twitches. That's the most common thing that I see pets come in for is they'll start having muscle twitches and that's when pet parents will know that there's actually a problem.
They'll have seizures. They could go in a coma because it can't affect their brain like I was saying before. It causes swelling of the brain and unfortunately can't even lead to death. So eclampsia, it happens to female dogs and cats within usually the first four weeks after giving birth. Any dog or cat can develop eclampsia, but small dogs in particular, and pets with larger litter sizes are more susceptible to this.
It's not as common for cats to get eclampsia though but it still can happen and more frequently occurs in the early stages of lactation. So like basically right after giving birth for cats, Dogs and cats can even have it in the weeks leading up to birth. It's just not as common. It's more common for them to have it after giving birth.
If your pet has recently given birth and you notice any of those symptoms above, definitely get [00:04:00] them into the vet immediately. Luckily there are not a lot of tests that we have to do to be able to diagnose this condition. We usually check your pet's calcium levels first.
There are two types of calcium tests. The first one is called the total calcium, and the second one is called the ionized calcium. The total calcium will work, but the ionized calcium is more accurate, so that's usually what we use. Sometimes we'll also check other things like her blood sugar or her blood glucose is the other term for that to see if that's low, especially with all that shaking and especially small breed dogs.
They can run out of glucose or run out of blood sugar pretty quickly. Some vets will also do a full blood work just to make sure that there's not something else that this could be from. You can have lots of different things that can cause these serum symptoms, or they may perform x-rays, also known as radiographs, to make sure that there isn't like a fetus that's left in the uterus.
Now what about the treatment for eclampsia? We've seen the symptoms of it. We've gotten the calcium levels to have a [00:05:00] diagnosis, and now we need to know how to treat this. So again, if you do suspect that your pet has eclampsia, definitely take her to the vet as soon as possible.
The first thing that we're gonna do is stabilize her. So this usually involves using IV calcium. Meaning we're gonna give her calcium directly into her veins. We'll also monitor her E C G, that's otherwise known as an ekg, but it's just to make sure that her heart is functioning correctly while she receives the calcium.
Calcium is really important to the heart's muscles and how the heart beats. So if we give it too fast, it can cause her heart rate to become really low. That's otherwise known as bradycardia. She can also have arrhythmias, which means that the heart isn't beating correctly and that can even cause death if it's pushed too quickly.
We wanna make sure that we're doing this very carefully. If she has hypoglycemia, meaning that she has that low blood sugar, we're also gonna be giving her a blood sugar supplementation as well to bring that blood sugar up. We [00:06:00] also wanna monitor her calcium levels until she gets to a normal calcium level.
Some people also give IV fluids, meaning fluids right directly into the vein or SQ fluids, which is fluids under the skin, usually along the back to help rehydrate her as well. It also will help bring down that temperature. The most common scenario is usually that the mom gives birth.
Everything seems to be going really well for a week or two, and then you start noticing mom tremoring and not wanting to eat. That can be really hard for some little dogs, right? Like chihuahuas who tremor or shake because they're just really nervous. So if she's been fairly normal with the puppies up until now, and then you suddenly start seeing this tremoring, it's probably real , and you probably need to get her calcium checked. The pet parent usually brings them into the vet office and we ask a series of questions. So we'll usually ask, when she had her last puppies, has she had any vaginal discharge? We need to know some of these other things to know if there's something else that's going on.
Is she drinking a lot of water? Has she [00:07:00] been eating? What has she been eating? What kind of food has she been eating? So we can determine what our next steps need to be. Then we usually draw blood for blood work. Like I said, this is very typical that we're gonna check ionized calcium levels, but it could be that we check other values as well.
We could check her kidney values to make sure that they're functioning correctly too. And if it comes back as low, then we place an IV catheter. So it's just for us to get quick access to her veins. She'll be hooked up to an ECG and then given a dose of calcium. Usually when we see fluids given either through the IV or possibly under the skin, and then we'll give her a little bit of time to see if that dose of calcium that we gave was enough. It's not an exact science as to how much we need to give, it's not if the calcium is this much, then we have to give this much, unfortunately,
we have to make our best guess as to how much is going to be a good dose for her, and then to recheck her calcium levels to see if that dose was adequate. And even if it's not exactly normal, [00:08:00] at least if we got pretty close to normal, that's usually okay. We can always supplement them with oral calcium rather than having to do more IV injections.
But if they're not quite normal, if they're still pretty low, then we're gonna repeat the doses of calcium until we've gotten that calcium to a normal level. If they're normal, then we usually take out her IV and send her home so that she can be with the puppies. If that's what we're gonna do. And I'll get to that in just a moment, but, If she comes in comatose though, that likely means that she has something called cerebral edema or basically that she has too much swelling or fluid that's on her brain.
That usually means that the mom's gonna have to stay in the hospital for at least 24 hours cuz she's gonna need oxygen and she's gonna need medications to help bring down that swelling of her brain. That is when it starts to become more concerning for it being a life-threatening problem. We don't know what the damage will be after, we've gotten that swelling to come off that brain.
It is really important to note too, [00:09:00] that you should not just attempt to treat her at home. Giving her dog supplements or just like a D I Y treatment can make her condition worse. There are many other diseases and toxins that can cause low calcium or clinical signs that we normally see with eclampsia.
So if a pet is treated unnecessarily with calcium, it could lead to kidney failure. And if it's just that it's assumed that she has eclampsia, but instead she has a different disease, then if we don't treat that disease, this is gonna be detrimental. So we wanna make sure that we've diagnosed it, it's hypocalcemia, and that we've given her the proper treatment.
One of the other things that's pretty imperative for allowing mom to heal is not to let her nurse. So there's actually two methods of thought to this. Some say just for 12 to 24 hours, while others recommend weaning the puppies and kittens completely, that way mom's milk can dry up, and that way she won't be pulling all the calcium reserves to feed the babies for that 12 to 24-hour period.
That [00:10:00] some suggest that's because it takes about 24 hours for calcium to build back up in her body. So we definitely don't want her to nurse during that period of time. But like I said, it's very highly debated as to which one is the best one. There are definitely breeders that go both ways. A lot of this information we get us from breeders, like how they did.
Afterwards, so it's really up to you as to make the decision that's gonna be best for you and for those puppies. If she has it again though, during that same time period of when she's nursing, then she should not nurse anymore. She needs to wean those puppies.
If you do wean the puppies, that is gonna mean that we're gonna have to bottle feed those puppies or kittens until they're ready to eat puppy or kitten food. I know how hard this is. Trust me when there's large litters. Having family members help out and taking turns can be really helpful with this.
If you have four people getting up in the middle of the night to take turns, then you're less exhausted and better able to take care of them. Usually we recommend feeding them about every [00:11:00] two to three hours, so we definitely wanna make sure that you're not getting up every two to three hours if somebody else can be doing this as well.
And then just remember too, this is only for a few weeks, until they really start eating solid foods, which is typically around four weeks old. And then you have a whole other mess to clean up as, as they start eating, puppy food and kitten food, but they're on more of a day schedule by that time at least.
For mom, we do want you to continue supplementation at home as well. We usually recommend Tums. Many people think of Tums as using it for themselves for heartburn, but this is actually really good for our dogs who need calcium cuz it's made from calcium carbonate and it's really easy on their stomach.
It's super easy to get, so it makes a very good supplement. The dose is typically gonna be 25 to 50 milligrams per kilogram per day. And for those of you who don't, two, don't Two kilograms for pounds, that's going to be 55 to 110 milligrams per [00:12:00] pound per day. So you should divide these into three or four doses throughout the day. For cats, they should receive about half a gram to a gram per day. Again, divided into three or four doses. So just as an example, if you have a dog that weighs about 10 pounds, you can multiply that 10 pounds by 55 to get the smallest dose which would be 550 milligrams that she would need.
And if we wanna get the largest dose, We would do 10 pounds times 110 milligrams to get 1,100 milligrams as the highest dose. So our dose range there is between 550 milligrams to 1,100 milligrams. Tums are sold in like multiple different sizes, so you can get Tums in a thousand milligrams. Just do a quarter tablet of that four times a day, and that will make up to be a thousand milligrams.
She should be on it for the entire time that she's nursing the babies and then slowly weaned off of it when they're eating solid food. If you had [00:13:00] weaned the puppies or kittens off, then she actually should be on it for about two weeks after that weaning process, cuz she's still gonna make milk and we need to supplement that back into her.
With treatment, the prognosis is excellent as long as we haven't gotten to the point of cerebral edema where her brain is swelling. It's usually pretty good. And then almost all of the moms live and can do really well, just with some special care and supplementation at home. Now, let's talk about prevention.
As they saying goes, prevention is definitely better than a cure. The good news is that you can take steps to prevent eclampsia in your pets. The main thing you should do is to make sure that your dog or cat is eating a really well-balanced diet that's very nutritious. During the last stages of pregnancy and for the first few weeks of lactation, your dog and cat should be eating more.
The goal is to have her gain about 15 to 25% of her body weight by the time she is ready to welp. We're basically when she's ready to give birth. So we used to recommend giving puppy food and kitchen food during pregnancy.[00:14:00]
But it's actually been found that by giving them high amounts of calcium during the pregnancy, it disrupts the body's like natural balance. Their body needs adequate amounts of nutrients during pregnancy to help prevent things like fading puppy syndrome. And their body also needs adequate nutrients while nursing the offspring, because calcium is naturally pulled from the body to put into the milk that is being delivered to the offspring.
Which is a substantial amount, like it takes a lot of energy for mom to produce that. It's also not recommended to give calcium supplements while mom is pregnant. So this is because too much calcium can cause calcium deposits in the muscle or in the skin of the puppies and kittens while they're growing and it's not just the fetuses growing bones.
So we wanna be very careful about supplementing while she's pregnant. A veterinarian from the A K C or the American Kennel Club does recommend like a good high quality, [00:15:00] highly digestible and good tasting food that has at least 29% protein, 17% fat, less than 0.5% dietary fiber, and a calcium level between one and 1.6% and a phosphorus level between 0.8 to 1.6%.
That was a lot. That was a lot of numbers I just threw at you. So they have a great article about how to like best feed dogs based on their stages of pregnancy and lactation. Purina has a really great article breaking down food requirements during each of the reproductive stages as well. So I'll post those links for you.
There's no specific diet that's ever recommended. Unfortunately, like there are many diets out there and many people have opinions about all of them. And some people love certain diets and some people don't love certain diets, so unfortunately, it's just not really a good diet to say this is the one that you should get.
There are dog and cat foods though, that are labeled specifically for lactating moms that can help you get a good start, at least when you're [00:16:00] trying to figure out the best food. I know it's a lot to go through a ton of dog foods and cat foods trying to figure out what the best food will be, but at least there are some that are labeled.
So just as an example I found Royal Canin has a starter, mother and baby dog food and kitten food. So for the dog food, when you look up the nutritional information, it says there's 28% protein, 20% fat, 3.4% fiber. So remember the A K C suggested 29% protein. So 28, 29 is pretty close, 17% fat. So we had 20% fat in the royal canin food, again, pretty close, and then less of than 5% fiber.
So theirs was 3.5% fiber. So definitely less than that. So that's not exactly what the A K C recommends, but it's fairly close at least. Something close to that is gonna be okay. That's when we get really high numbers, then we start worrying about that. For people who actually prefer to make a homemade diet [00:17:00] during this time of pregnancy and lactation, there are veterinary nutritionists that can help with that balanced diet.
There's a website called balance it.com, and I'll link that again as well, which is an online veterinary nutritionist website where you can just put in your pet's information and you can even pick the ingredients that you want to use, and they'll come up with the exact ingredients to help make sure that diet is balanced so that you can give it to your pets who are gestating or lactating.
So if they're pregnant or they're nursing. There are also food companies that will make specifically formulated foods for your pet and then just send it to you. The one that I know the most about is called Just Food for Dogs. They have a veterinary nutritionist, or multiple veterinary nutritionists now and a veterinary toxicologist on board so that they make sure that everything is very nutritionally balanced and okay for your pet and okay for all the puppies or kittens.
Unfortunately, they really just do dogs, they don't do cats as [00:18:00] much. Like they do have one cat food. I don't know if you call if they might be able to do a cat food as well, but I know that they mostly focus on dogs. But feeding a really high quality food throughout this time will help just prevent trips to the emergency veterinarian as well as prevent problems with the babies and the mom.
A question that I often get is, will mom get this again if I breed her again? So technically the answer is no. If you give her a really good high quality diet while she's pregnant, and while she's nursing, while she's pregnant, you wanna make sure that she's not underweight. If she's underweight, you do get things that happen like
fading puppy syndrome or them having puppies that are still born. So we wanna make sure that we have really good high quality diets while pregnant, and then also while she's nursing as well, so that way we can avoid things like eclampsia. If you do not feed a high quality diet, then yes, this will definitely [00:19:00] happen again.
All right, so we've covered everything you need to know now about eclampsia, including our symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. So remember, if you notice any of these signs of eclampsia with your dog or cat, definitely take her to the veterinarian immediately.
Now I'm gonna do our fun fact real quick. So today I chose a fact about moms and baby animals. So did you know that when a baby blue whale, otherwise known as a calf is born, that it weighs five to six thousand pounds. That is huge. A nursing blue whale mother produces about 50 gallons of milk a day with about 35 to 50% of the milk being fat.
All that fat helps the calf to grow at a rate of 10 pounds per hour. You heard that per hour, 10 pounds per hour, or that's also equivalent to 240 pounds a day. That's crazy. The calf isn't weaning for [00:20:00] about six months, and I can't even imagine like how much calcium that mom would need to be able to consume at that rate.
That's a ton of calcium that she has to produce, plus they primarily eat krill. Like these are these tiny little things like they have to eat a lot of krill. So now when you're bottle feeding all of those baby puppies and kittens for four weeks, just remember at least you are not bottle feeding a baby blue whale for six months.
There'll be a lot of food. All right, thank you guys for listening to vetsplanation, and I will see you next week for our next episode.
Thank you guys for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or you just wanna say hi, you can email me at S U G G S@explanationpodcast.com, or visit the website @vetsplanationpodcast.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok Vetsplanation. Thank you all for listening, and I'll see you back here next week.