Lab breakthrough as Harvey’s heart steadies
HARVEY the labrador’s heart looked like a plate of wobbling jelly.
The quiver was the result of a dangerously fast heart rhythm – whirring at 300 beats per minute – because of an abnormal electrical connection.
Phil Bretherton knew only that 10-month-old Harvey – who joined the family as a nine-week-old puppy for youngest son Josh’s 21st birthday, was vomiting and out of sorts.
“We thought he’d eaten something, which he was prone to doing,” Mr Bretherton said.
A dog’s resting heart rate should be about 70-100bpm, but Harvey’s was more than 300.
Under the care of Victoria’s only veterinary cardiologist, Dr Richard Woolley, medication was used to correct the heart rhythm. But he kept relapsing. Dr Woolley reached out to his University of Melbourne colleague, Royal Melbourne Hospital cardiologist Dr Joe Morton, who performs catheter ablations to treat irregular heartbeats in human patients.
The pair had saved the life of a dog with a similar condition two years ago, by burning abnormal electrical connections in its heart.
Mr Bretherton said: “There wasn’t really an option. Basically, he is our fourth child and probably the cutest.”
While the canine anatomy is similar, it is smaller, forcing Dr Morton to be “imaginative”.
“In humans, we pass the wire to the heart by going in through the groin, and the veins can repair themselves. But in dogs, they don’t often repair themselves,” Dr Morton said.
“The dog has a big vein on the side of its neck, so we went in through there – which we’ve never done before in a person. You can’t just throw a dog on a scrap heap when the problem is easy to fix.”
Five days after the successful procedure, Harvey was back at the vet – someone had poured rat poison over their 3m-high back fence.
“If he were a cat, he would have used up two of his nine lives,” Mr Bretherton said.