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Hooting Noises, Lung Problem?

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Sakano

Sakano

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I looked up hooting noises the other day because one of my guinea pigs was making it. A lot of people said it was the sign of a heart problem. I took him to a vet today, this particular vet has been pretty good for us so far. The vet said that he thinks its a lung problem, he listened to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope and said his heart sounds healthy but his lungs sounded like he had a little infection.

What do you think? I asked a few times about the heart thing, but he didn't think so.
 
Sakano said:
I looked up hooting noises the other day because one of my guinea pigs was making it. A lot of people said it was the sign of a heart problem. I took him to a vet today, this particular vet has been pretty good for us so far. The vet said that he thinks its a lung problem, he listened to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope and said his heart sounds healthy but his lungs sounded like he had a little infection.

What do you think? I asked a few times about the heart thing, but he didn't think so.
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Hooting is in the VAST majority of cases the sign of a slight blockage of the nasal passages; especially if it is a one off event that lasts only for a few hours or a day and that is nothing to worry about. It can be a bit of hay dust or pollen stuck in the nose.

To bring hooting into connection with heart issues, you want to see persistent hooting over a longer period of time in combination with other symptoms that indicate potential heart problems, none of which you have mentioned.

Unfortunately hooting is one of these things that have hit the usual online places, spread like wildfire and that is now there to panic and confuse any worried owners doing their online research; there are a few other issues like this one that have been taken well out of their context and that we see crop up regularly. :(

If your vet has had a check and has found nothing, then there is simply nothing to find.
 
Thanks! That makes me feel a lot better. I usually am a little more cautious about what I read online, but in this case it seemed to be in every post I read about hooting, so I did panic a little.
 
Sakano said:
Thanks! That makes me feel a lot better. I usually am a little more cautious about what I read online, but in this case it seemed to be in every post I read about hooting, so I did panic a little.
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Yes, unfortunately for a time everybody was told that hooting was a symptom of heart disease (at a time when many general vets were still convinced that guinea pigs didn't suffer from heart problems) and it takes time to wipe that out as it has tendency to hang around for quite a long time. :(

Heart issues are often very difficult to diagnose. It can take a very good vet and a very good stethoscope to catch them, especially as there is a range of heart problems and not just one heart disease. Usually the easiest to find is an irregular heart rhythm.
 
Hadley recently had recurrent on-and-off hooting as a sign of a respiratory infection. At first we just thought nasal irritation, but since it was so persistently recurrent she was treated with antibiotics for a lung infection and it cleared up.
 
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