James Specialist Veterinary Cardiology

18/12/2025

Introducing Tilly to you all 🥰

Not only is Tilly a wee stunner and the *nicest* dog you could meet she is also our 6000th patient!! 🥳🙌🫶

Tilly came to see Luke to investigate a heart murmur discovered by her primary care vets and was diagnosed with a mild mitral valve disease at stage B1. We will need to recheck Tilly to make sure her heart disease isn't progressing quickly but she is in line to have a great Christmas!

We had a fun discussion through Tilly's investigations about what her breeds may be............comment below if you think you know 🤓😍

Many thanks to for hosting us this day.

16/12/2025

We are bedecked with Christmas Cheer!!!

⛄🎁🥳🎄🎅🏽🤶🏽❄️

15/12/2025

Gorgeous Hattie demonstrating for us for treats!!

04/12/2025

Here is lovely Hattie in her Christmas gear (because now it's December there really is no excuse!!).

Hattie is demonstrating one of our most used tools in the clinic - the ECG or electrocardiogram.

Almost every veterinary practice will utilise an ECG, particularly in the theatre to monitor patients under anaesthetic, but ours is a little bit special 😍

We use the ECG to document (and rule out) arrhythmias, which is when abnormal beats disrupt the usual electrical rhythm of the heart beat and can cause major upset in maintaining cardiac output. The reason our ECG is a bit special is that we don't just record one lead of the ECG, or even 3 like most theatre monitors, ours records 6 leads as a standard and can even perform 12 lead ECG when indicated by complicated rhythm disturbances 🤓

The different leads "look" across the heart at different points. The basic I II and III leads give great baseline information. AVR, AVL and AVF "look" through the heart at slightly different angles and give us more information. The 12 leads give EVEN MORE information and help us diagnose those really tricky arrhythmias.

We then measure the different waves of a normal beat and ascertain if there are any abnormalities within the PQRST. All of this is reported and then interpreted by our very clever Cardiologists 😁

The clips we use are atraumatic and very gentle, sometimes we use sticky pads on the feet of the patient. We don't sedate patients for this procedure because the sedation may cause changes in the ECG and we want to know what is normal for our patient. We ask our patients to lie on their right side with the help of cuddles and distraction whilst the ECG is recorded so that we can compare findings with the textbook normals. ECG's can also be recorded with the patient in an upright position if this is not possible.

Clients - we hope this post helps inform about the ECG and how we use it ☺️

Veterinary professionals - if you have a challenging ECG you would like help with we provide an advice service via email on info@jsvc.co.uk ☺️

www.jsvc.co.uk

01/12/2025

Soak in the beauty of Maine C**n kitten Ziggy 😻

Ziggy came to see Callan because of a heart murmur auscultated by his primary care vets. This was a moderate grade murmur at 3/6 and with no associated clinical signs at home so Ziggy was part of our fixed price Kitten Check, which includes a consultation and full heart scan.

In cats, the grade of heart murmur doesn't correlate to severity of disease, so it's always worth scheduling an echo to diagnose the cause of the murmur ❤

Wonderfully for Ziggy, he was diagnosed with a flow murmur which should resolve as he grows. We will see him again if his murmur changes or he develops clinical signs of heart disease 🫶

Many thanks to for hosting us this day

www.jsvc.co.uk

27/11/2025

Who could resist this gorgeous boy?!

Introducing Golden Retriever Jurgen who came to see Phil for a recheck of his dilated cardiomyopathy phenotype along with Rhino, who accompanies Jurgen everywhere currently 😍

Jurgen loves nothing but cuddles and is convinced he is but a small dog who will fit in anybody's arms 😆🥰

Phil found that Jurgen is currently stable and will continue on his medication regime until his next check 🫶

Many thanks to VillageVets And Meadowbank for hosting us this day ❤

24/11/2025

Remember Brian??? ❤

Brian is a super lovely Cavalier King Charles Spaniel whom we placed a pacemaker generator in a few months ago due to third degree atrioventricular block. Brian has been doing splendidly well at home and he represented to Rachel for a check of his pacemaker settings.

Luke took this opportunity to get involved and see how the programmer works and what settings needed adjusting 🤓

After a wee tweak of a couple of parameters Brian was soon off home to enjoy the rest of his day 🥰

20/11/2025

Team JSVC were let loose recently and attended the 50th Autumn meeting of the Veterinary Cardiovascular Society (VCS) 🥰

It was a really great couple of days catching up with old friends and colleagues and making some new ones with the fantastic lectures provided both in the main stream and the dedicated nursing stream 🤓❤

Always lots to learn and take back to enhance our practice 🙌🫶

13/11/2025

Our beautiful Lady xx

13/11/2025

12/11/2025

The gorgeous Lady!