004. Feline Urinary Syndrome (FUS)
Description
This article is from the Medical Information FAQ, posted to rec.pets.cats newsgroup. Maintained by Cindy Tittle Moore with numerous contributions by others.
004. Feline Urinary Syndrome (FUS)
Feline urinary syndrome or FUS is the name given to a group of symptoms that occur in the cat secondary to inflammation, irritation, and/or obstruction of the lower urinary tract (urinary bladder, urethra, and penile urethra). A cat with FUS can exhibit one, some, or even all of the symptoms.
FUS is NOT a specific diagnosis: there are many known and some unknown factors that may cause or contribute to FUS. Any cause resulting in particulate debris in the urine is capable of causing obstruction in the male cat.
Males are much more likely to get this disease than females. There is no known means of prevention. Treatment can vary from diet to surgery. Cats usually recover if the disease is caught in time; often the cat must be watched for any recurrence of FUS.
Symptoms
May appear periodically during the life of the cat.
* Females: straining to urinate, blood in the urine, frequent trips to the litter box with only small amounts voided, loss of litterbox habits.
* Males: In addition to the above symptoms, small particles may lodge in the male urethra and cause complete obstruction with the inability to pass urine-this is a life and death situation if not treated quickly.
Obstruction usually occurs in the male cat and is most often confined to the site where the urethra narrows as it enters the bulbourethral gland and penis; small particles that can easily pass out of the bladder and transverse the urethra congregate at the bottleneck of the penile urethra to cause complete blockage. (note that the female urethra opens widely into the vagina with no bottleneck).
Symptoms of obstruction are much more intense than those of bladder inflammation alone; this is an emergency requiring immediate steps to relieve the obstruction. Symptoms include:
* Frequent non-producing straining-no urine produced, discomfort, pain, howling.
* Gentle feeling of the cats abdomen reveals a tennis ball size structure which is the overdistended urinary bladder.
* Subsequent depression, vomiting and/or diarrhea, dehydration, loss of appetite, uremic poisoning, and coma may develop rapidly within 24 hours.
* Death results from uremic poisoning; advanced uremic poisoning may not be reversible even with relief of the obstruction and intensive care. Bladders can be permanently damaged as a result.
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