Elderly dog and heart tests

[Elsabet]

I took my 12 year old mini poodle/welsh terrier cross to the vet today to look at a brown lump on her leg, the lump is no bigger than 1cm.
The vet said to monitor for the next month to see if the sizes changes.
The vet also went onto say that she should be having annual heart tests, X-ray, ECG, ultrasound and blood tests etc so they can see how her heart is progressing, all this for approx £1,000.
I don’t know of any other dog owner friends that undergo these tests each year?
In every other way she is fine, eats well, not overnight and active.
Would you be putting your dogs through these tests?

Tell the vet to jog on. We've moved to an independent vet our vet retired a big company bought them out and they turned into a cash making machine

@justasking111 that’s what I was thinking, a money making scheme! One of her first words was is she insured! The practice starts with vets and ends with pets!
I am going to monitor the size of the lump like she said abs see how we go.

The vets 4 pets usually have vets or vet nurses as % owners so they do still have a say in how things are run, however some may wish to be more profitable than others.

Has your dog been diagnosed with a heart issue that requires investigation/monitoring? Otherwise doesn't make much sense.

My oldie has blood tests couple times a year to check function as on regular medications and they give her general health check at same time. My vets didn't push for that, I just feel I'd rather be aware of potential problems sooner than later, some vets offer this as OAP package which can make better value and I think there's an issue with folk stopping vaccinations and then the dogs aren't even getting annual health check.

This vet sees you as a money machine. Tell them to jog on.

@Scattyhattie she has a heart murmur than was diagnosed about 5 years ago. But I was not told she needed any monitoring at the time.
She did have the heart function tests back in 2018 before they would operate on her as she had a small growth removed from her eye water line. It has since grown back, it doesn’t bother her and causes no issues so it has not been removed again. The vet did say it could return so we could get up having it removed on a continuous basis! I can’t remember what it was called but it looks like a little coco pop!
I would much prefer that she has blood tests, less invasive.

[quote Elsabet]@Scattyhattie she has a heart murmur than was diagnosed about 5 years ago. But I was not told she needed any monitoring at the time.
She did have the heart function tests back in 2018 before they would operate on her as she had a small growth removed from her eye water line. It has since grown back, it doesn’t bother her and causes no issues so it has not been removed again. The vet did say it could return so we could get up having it removed on a continuous basis! I can’t remember what it was called but it looks like a little coco pop!
I would much prefer that she has blood tests, less invasive.[/quote]
As a result of the the EPIC study ( large scale multi centre double blinded trial). The recommendations change that dogs with a heart murmur grade 2 or above who don't currently have clinical signs should be evaluated for cardiomegaly ( heart enlargement) either by ultrasound or x-ray. If there is evidence of heart enlargement the study found that by starting a particular medication time to onset of clinical signs was increased and life expectancy was increased.
So your vet is rather enthusiastically following the recommendations, in my practice we would do an ultrasound that usually requires no sedation and is pretty quick.
Whilst no every test suggested is part of the recommendations checking every year for heart enlargement is recommended.

Thank you @Lonecatwithkitten your post is really informative. I will ask if they will undertake only an ultrasound. If not I will take her to another practice

@Elsabet

Thank you *@Lonecatwithkitten* your post is really informative. I will ask if they will undertake only an ultrasound. If not I will take her to another practice

You are welcome I like to practice good evidence based medicine, but dislike excessive work ups.