Experience with Advanced Heartworm Disease

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Madelinto

Madelinto

Boxer Pal
We adopted our sweet gentle boy Frankie this January. He was a rescue and we knew he'd have some health issues, since he weighed in at 38lbs as an adult. We've since gotten him up to 53lbs.
I saw him faint three times and after talking to breeders and reading the forums here, I requested a cardiology visit.
Long story short, when doing the EKG the vet found hearworms, adult, big ugly heartworms. He must have contracted them in the summer-fall and they weren't visable/detectable by test in January for 6-9 months, hence the fainting beginning in May.

Because we also discovered that he has Pulmonary Hypertension the doc said that he was a "high risk" patient for the heartworm treatment. Does anyone have experience with heartworm treatment in dogs that are considered high risk? The hope is that we can cure the HW and then treat the hypertension with meds.

Thanks Guys!
 
Madelinto

Madelinto

Boxer Pal
Frankie is also a southern boy, and the vet didn't suggest manually removing. Instead the fast kill injection was reccommended since he is already in the moderate stages with fainting and coughing. I would LOVE to just yank them out because the risk of embollism is high... I'm going to ask if this is an auction. So glad your guy is loving life! Did he also have hypertension, or just heartworms?
Thank you for the info!
 
A

apalance

Boxer Pal
what's the current treatment?

Is he on HW preventative now? Which one?

Did the vet prescribe anything to help, such as doxycyline and prednisone?

Usually with these high risk dogs, we start off with heartgard every 2 weeks and doxycyline and prednisone if the dog is already coughing/fainting. The pred helps reduce inflammation caused by the worms and helps with breathing. Doxy is also somewhat anti-inflammatory. Some studies have shown that doxy in combination w/ heartgard kills adult worms faster.

We don't even do HW treatment (immiticide) until the dog has been on the protocol above for at least 2 months. Here in Houston about 80% of shelter dogs are HW+ and for some reason we've got some really crappy boxer owners here and they are usually heavy HW+. The idea is to weaken the worms enough and eliminate what you can then do immiticide split into 2-4 treatments. The first dose is a low dose so that it will only affect some of the worms. Then about 30 days later, repeat either the full dose or another 1/2 dose, depending on the dogs condition.

You might ask your vets about this. I have not lost a dog to HW treatment yet and I have had some REALLY bad cases.
 
Madelinto

Madelinto

Boxer Pal
apalance said:
Is he on HW preventative now? Which one?

Did the vet prescribe anything to help, such as doxycyline and prednisone?

Usually with these high risk dogs, we start off with heartgard every 2 weeks and doxycyline and prednisone if the dog is already coughing/fainting. The pred helps reduce inflammation caused by the worms and helps with breathing. Doxy is also somewhat anti-inflammatory. Some studies have shown that doxy in combination w/ heartgard kills adult worms faster.

We don't even do HW treatment (immiticide) until the dog has been on the protocol above for at least 2 months. Here in Houston about 80% of shelter dogs are HW+ and for some reason we've got some really crappy boxer owners here and they are usually heavy HW+. The idea is to weaken the worms enough and eliminate what you can then do immiticide split into 2-4 treatments. The first dose is a low dose so that it will only affect some of the worms. Then about 30 days later, repeat either the full dose or another 1/2 dose, depending on the dogs condition.

You might ask your vets about this. I have not lost a dog to HW treatment yet and I have had some REALLY bad cases.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your response! So, he was tested negative in JAnuary when I got him, by the rescue. We started him immediately on Heart gard, and he's been on it since. We don't have mosquitos in Massachusetts until May, so he definitely had them when he left the south.
He is deemed at high risk for treatment, which was a shot, low activity and then two shots 4 hours apart as you described. The other issue is that he has Pulmonary Hypertension, which I can't help but think is exacerbated by the heartworms. The vet hasn't prescribed prednisone or heartgard every 2 weeks yet, but we are going to meet in the am. I haven't beento our new vet yet, I went straight to the ardiologist, and she found the worms when doing an EKG.
Is it reasonable to think the Pulmonary hypertension will dissipate with the worms being removed?
THANK YOU so much for your input. I need a little hope here.
 
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