Anyone have experience with Hydronephrosis?

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no experience, but did a quick search on another list. paraphrasing a layperson that i highly respect: it's a descriptive term, not a diagnosis ... can be from any type of obstructive uropathy eg a stone, a blood clot, or a tumor, etc. ... could be a genetic defect ... can lead to ARF (from another website) or CRF ...

see also http://www.walthamusa.com/articles/fkidney.pdf page 11 for description
http://www.petplace.com/cats/hydronephr ... /page1.asp for treatment (i think it doesn't cover everything)

do you know the cause?

eta: in humans: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/436259-overview
 
x-rays revealed some kidney stones but can't say for certain if there is one causing an obstruction. kitty is still drinking, eating, and peeing the same as he has for the last several months.

right kidney appeared about the size of a small orange on x-ray though. could be cyst too though?

kitty doesn't appear to be in pain and other than feeling bloaty or like he had eaten a huge meal, when i picked him up this morning, you would never know this was there based on his behavior. pointed it out to vet and kitty didn't like the physical exam, yelling at the vet for the first time in his life. she asked to do x-rays which of course i said yes and the above was found.

vet said "we have a problem" and used the term "life threatening" and in essence, where we are now is that we can do more diagnostics or we could make a decision, most likely in the next couple days. he is nearing 16 years old so we have to weigh that as far as further decisions go too and how much we should put him thru.

vet did like that kitty came home and ran around the house, ate a normal meal and then proceeded to groom himself like normal, particularly where they shaved his belly to take a quick look inside him with her old u/s thing she has. :-)

for now at least we're on the books for monday to do an u/s with an ultrasonagrapher to get a better look at what we're dealing with. hesitant to wait that long but based on kitty's behavior, vet thinks we can make it until then. possibly, and depending on what the u/s shows, we'll then move to something else i can't remember the name of but in essence, dye and a series of x-rays to see what the kidneys are in fact doing.

she did call a specialist/surgeon and asked some questions about draining and risks involved, etc.....and we considered doing that today but if she got blood instead of urine, she'd have to stop, hope the bleeding stopped, and that we still had a kitty by dinnertime so given that he doesn't seem to know there's something wrong with him, we decided to wait on that.

she did send me home with pain meds to keep him comfortable if need be and gave me her cell phone number in case he does start showing signs of pain or suffering before then.

we're still in the research and ask questions mode at this point in time and kitty is napping now after his thorough bathing he gave himself.

i have to admit, given that we had a cyst removed not that long ago, i'm really hoping it's another cyst

eta: i forgot to mention that of course there is also the possibility of cancer. fwiw, though, b/w was all good. even kidney numbers, which is what the appt was for today--to recheck kidney numbers, were unchanged from 3 months ago.
 
Cindy + Mousie said:
x-rays revealed some kidney stones but can't say for certain if there is one causing an obstruction. kitty is still drinking, eating, and peeing the same as he has for the last several months.

right kidney appeared about the size of a small orange on x-ray though. could be cyst too though?
don't know about cyst, no experience with kidney cysts. but only right kidney is enlarged? wonder if it's only partially obstructed and/or left kidney is working harder to compensate for it, hence normal drinking, eating, peeing and WNL values.

possibly, and depending on what the u/s shows, we'll then move to something else i can't remember the name of but in essence, dye and a series of x-rays to see what the kidneys are in fact doing.
excretory urography? i don't know anything about it, was mentioned in the petplace link.

glad he has pain meds. fingers crossed he'll stay stable over the weekend and the u/s shows something treatable.
 
yep, only right kidney. left kidney looked fine. and yes, that's the name of the other procedure. part of doing it would be to help see how well the left kidney is working in case we needed to remove his right one. that would also be a big factor in whether surgery would be doable or not.

he's eating his dinner right now with the rest of the boys :-)
 
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