A Report on Malignant Hyperthermia

A Report On Malignant Hyperthermia

Imagine a “hidden disease” that is usually inherited with no clear signs of symptoms until it’s suddenly triggered by drugs, or the right environmental factor or stressor. Then, once triggered, this disease induces a drastic and uncontrolled increase in skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism which overwhelms the body’s capacity to supply oxygen, regulate body temperature, and remove carbon dioxide. When this occurs, you may observe muscle rigidity, rapid heartbeat, high body temperature, muscular breakdown, and an increase in acid content (MHAUS, 2014). If not treated in a quick manner, Malignant Hyperthermia will kill.

What makes this disease into a horror story is the fact that it arises upon certain triggers that are either environmental or certain types of drugs administrated from the veterinarians orders. The most common triggering agents are anesthetic gases like sevoflurane, halothane, enflurane, desflurane, and isoflurane. Certain types of muscle relaxants that are commonly added to anesthetic gases have also been known to trigger the disease as well as catecholamines, phenothiazines, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors which inhibits the activity of the monoamine oxidase enzyme family and is usually used to treat depression. That’s right! People can get Malignant Hyperthermia as well as are little furry friends. It’s not all bad news though, Some local anesthetics have been considered safe like; lidocaine, bupivacaine, and mepivacaine. Also, common opiates like morphine and fentanyl, and non depolarizing muscle relaxants are deemed to be safe. Other triggers that have been known to cause Malignant Hyperthermia include environmental factors and stressors such as intense exercise or an exposure to hot temperatures which can cause the body temperature to rise.

Symptoms of Malignant hyperthermia are bleeding, dark brown urine, Muscle aches without an obvious cause such as exercise or injury, muscle...