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As a dog parent, it is only natural to be emotionally and physically invested in ensuring your canine’s health and happiness. This makes encountering diseases like heartworms a nightmare! This ailment is a critical health complication that can gravely affect the lungs, leading to heart failure and causing damage to multiple organs.
Can a dog be cured of heartworms? Fortunately, yes! This life-threatening parasitic condition can be treated and even prevented with appropriate measures. Here, we will explore what causes heartworms in dogs, the common symptoms, and the required prevention and treatment. But first, let’s learn more about heartworm disease to understand its perils fully.
What is Heartworm Disease?
Dirofilaria immitis, aka the heartworms, which affect dogs and cats, are parasitic roundworms transmitted through mosquito bites. These heartworms inhabit the victim’s heart, lungs, and pulmonary arteries and can mature into 1-foot-long worms in just 7 months after entering the bloodstream. These parasites block the blood vessels and consume tissue, making it an extremely critical and often fatal condition. An infected dog can host up to a hundred of these worms, which can transmit to other healthy dogs through mosquito bites. This condition isn’t contagious through direct contact between dogs but can be transmitted between pets through mosquitoes. If a mosquito bites an infected dog, it can carry and spread the disease.
Once infected, this disease can cause long-term organ damage. Getting immediate treatment is crucial to keep your canine healthy and safe. The best way to keep your furry friend out of danger is to prevent this ailment. However, if your dog does get heartworms, seek urgent medical care. Look out for the symptoms of heartworm disease so you can take swift action!
Note: Clinical signs may not always appear. Take proactive measures through regular examinations by the veterinarian and testing for heartworms.
Signs of Heartworm Disease
Heartworm disease is dangerous and has permanent repercussions for your pet’s health. To ensure recovery, detecting this ailment as early as possible is essential. Watch out for these signs and immediately take your canine to the vet if you think your pet is sick.
- Weight loss: Heartworms cause loss of appetite and make simple tasks like eating difficult for your dog. This results in rapid weight loss.
- Lethargy: Your dog’s lack of interest in physical activities and exhaustion indicate underlying health concerns. Heartworms make it difficult for your dog to move and cause fatigue. If your dog appears more lethargic than usual, take it to the vet for examination.
- Constant coughing: One of the most common ways this disease shows up is through constant dry coughs. These chronic coughing spells happen as the heartworms affect the lungs.
- Swollen ribs: As heartworms develop and mature, fluid accumulates, causing your dog’s ribs to appear swollen. This happens in later stages, indicating more serious damage to your puppy’s health.
- Labored breathing: In later stages, the fluid accumulation and the presence of worms in the pulmonary arteries make breathing difficult for your dog. This curtails blood supply to the lungs and often results in heart failure. Take prompt action if you observe your dog struggling to breathe. The later the stage, the more difficult the treatment, with more long-term organ damage.
How Can You Prevent Heartworms in Dogs?
Regular medical check-ups are the best way to keep your canine safe from heartworm disease. Frequent evaluations and annual heartworm tests can keep your dog healthy.
Whether your dog is in perfect health or has encountered heartworm disease before, it is essential to start giving heartworm preventatives. Consult your veterinarian about what preventative medicines work best for your dog.
You can also fend off this illness with a well-balanced, nutritious diet. High-quality food ensures better health, making your dog less prone to diseases. If you think your dog has heartworms, immediately consider the treatment options with your vet, depending on the severity of the disease.
Treatment for Heartworm Disease in Dogs
Treating heartworm disease is expensive and taxing for your dog. You can discuss various aspects of treatment and recovery with your dog’s vet. After its diagnosis, your dog may be given medication or even undergo surgery to cure the disease completely.
Remember that it is a time-taking process that requires patience. Treatment is also risky and, in some cases, fatal. The good news is that most dogs are reported to heal and live normal lives once they have made a full recovery.
Delayed diagnosis could mean permanent damage to the heart and lungs, making treatment more complicated. In such cases, your vet may prioritize managing the side effects on your canine’s organs instead of killing the worms. When this happens, your dog will likely live for only a few weeks or months.
Medication
Remedying your dog’s condition consists of multiple stages, including medicines to kill larvae and adult heartworms and preventatives to stop the growth of new worms. Treatment starts with keeping your dog under observation at the hospital and giving drugs to kill the microfilariae (heartworm larvae). Later, your dog is given preventative medicines to stop the birth of new worms. Antibiotics are also given to help with potential infections that can result from bacteria in the worms.
The next step involves injecting melarsomine, a drug that kills adult heartworms. This medicine is given in the form of multiple doses, injected at predefined intervals according to your dog’s condition. An infected dog is given one injection, after which a 30-day rest period is essential. Later one more injection is given, followed by another after 24 hours.
Melarsomine causes muscle pain, so your vet may also prescribe painkillers. The recovery period after the first injection is crucial, as the drug can trigger side effects and reactions, leading to critical health complications. If you see your dog displaying any of the symptoms below, take your canine for urgent medical care:
- Loss of appetite
- Breathlessness
- Excessive coughing
- Coughing up blood
- Fever
- Depression.
Ensure your dog gets complete rest during recovery, especially the first week after each injection when the heartworms are dying. The dead worms accumulate in the lungs and vessels and are the main culprit behind complications. Keep movement low and offer antibiotics, supportive care, and intravenous fluids as your veterinarian recommends.
Depending on your dog’s condition and healing, your vet may advise life-long medication for damaged organs and continued preventative medicines. Your canine may also have to undergo dietary changes.
Heartworm tests are taken one month after the final injection. Another test is taken after nine months, and if your dog is completely healed, your vet will change the course of treatment.
Surgery
A rare and extreme treatment includes surgically removing the worms from the heart and lungs. This only happens in extremely severe conditions with low chances of survival.
Recovery
Focusing on swift recovery through restricted exercise is the most vital treatment step. Failing to ensure complete rest can lead to complications, so keep your dog confined in a calm environment. While it can be burdensome to make an active dog rest for long, it is essential to maintain low levels of activity to curb the damage caused by heartworms. You can use plush toys to keep your puppy calm and make a comfortable and cozy space for your dog to get more rest.
Heartworm disease is a critical health complication that can disrupt your dog’s life and damage its organs in severe cases. While it is rare, this condition can be fatal, so prevention is the ultimate way to keep your furry companion safe and healthy. Fortunately, early diagnosis and prompt treatment can cure this disease.
