Heartworm disease is a serious health condition that is typically fatal for pets, yet heartworm disease is easily preventable. In today's post, our North Fort Myers vets explain more about heartworm disease, treatments that are available and how you can protect your pet against this serious condition.
What is heartworm disease?
Heartworm disease is spread through mosquito bites and is primarily caused by a parasitic worm called Dirofilaria immitis.
Pets including dogs, cats and ferrets may become the parasite's definitive hosts, meaning that worms live inside the animal, then mature, mate and produce offspring. We call this condition heartworm disease because the worms live in the heart, lungs and blood vessels of an infected pet.
Symptoms on Heartworm Disease
Symptoms of heartworm disease unfortunately do not appear until the disease has reached advanced stages. Once symptoms do appear they include swollen abdomen, coughing, fatigue, weight loss and difficulty breathing.
Diagnosing Heartworm Disease in Pets
Your veterinarian can complete blood tests to detect heartworm proteins (antigens), which are released into the animal's bloodstream. Heartworm proteins can't be detected until about five months (at the earliest) after an animal is bitten by an infected mosquito.
Available Treatments for Heartworm
The reason why our vets stress the importance of preventing heartworm is that the treatments for heartworm disease can cause serious complications and be potentially toxic to your pet's body. Not only that, but treatment is also expensive because it requires multiple visits to the veterinarian, bloodwork, hospitalization, x-rays and a series of injections. This is why we say prevention is the absolute best treatment for heartworm disease.
That said, if your pet is diagnosed with heartworms, your vet will have treatment options available. FDA-approved melarsomine dihydrochloride is a drug that contains arsenic. It kills adult heartworms. Melarsomine dihydrochloride will be administered via injection into your pet's back muscles in order to treat the disease.
Topical FDA-approved solutions are also available. These can help to get rid of parasites in the bloodstream when applied directly to the animal's skin.
Protecting Your Pet From Heartworm Disease
It's important to keep your pet on preventive medication to prevent heartworm disease. Even if they are already on preventive heartworm medication, we recommend that dogs be tested for heartworms annually.
Heartworm prevention is safer, easier and much more affordable than treating the progressed disease. A number of heartworm preventive medications can also help protect against other parasites such as hookworms, whipworms and roundworms.