Holter Monitoring for Dogs & Cats in Prince George

What it Holter Monitoring?

A portable electrocardiogram (ECG) worn by your pet for 24 hours that continuously records the heart’s electrical activity during normal daily activity.

This lets us collect significantly more data than a standard ECG. At CHVC, we use Holter Monitoring on dogs and cats to provide us with a full picture of their heart health and rhythm during typical activities and over a longer period of time than other diagnostic tools show.

We generally use Holter Monitoring to diagnose heart rhythm disturbances (arrhythmias) or to monitor heart disease in cases when we believe a routine ECG would miss intermittent issues. This is a non-invasive test.

Why We Use Holter Monitoring

The benefits of using a holter monitor for diagnosis.

We’ll recommend a Holter Monitor to identify or diagnose occasional or intermittent cardiac arrhythmias also known as abnormal heart rhythms. They have several benefits, including that they:

  • allow us to catch intermittent heart rhythm issues that may not occur during a short, in-clinic visit
  • help us assess the effectiveness of heart medications
  • can monitor the effects of pacemaker programming
  • let us investigate symptoms like fainting, collapse weakness, dizziness, or lethargy
  • are valuable for creating an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan.
Holter Monitoring


What to Expect from Holter Monitoring

When we decide to do holter monitoring, we’ll have you bring your pet to the clinic.

There, we’ll shave small patches of fur to attach the monitor to your pet with electrodes placed on the chest. Once we have the Holter Monitor attached, you can bring your pet home.

Over the next 24 hours, we encourage you to continue with normal daily activities so we can get a full picture of your pet’s heart rhythm during both rest and activity. We’ll also ask you to keep a diary of your pet’s activities and any symptoms you deserve. It helps us correlate events with the data we receive from the Holter.

After the 24-hour, monitoring period, we’ll have you bring your pet and the diary into the clinic. We’ll remove the Holter and analyze the data. You’ll receive a phone call from us later to discuss a diagnosis and the course of treatment for your pet.