Heartworm Treatment and Prevention for Your Pets

Heartworm disease is serious, and it can be life-threatening for your pet. The worms live in the heart, lungs and other organs, which causes failure of these organs over time. Pets get the disease from mosquito bites. To protect your animal, you need to know what to do for treatment and prevention.

How to Know If Your Pet Has Heartworms

A vet will do a blood test to check for heartworms in a pet. It takes about five months for an infected dog to show up positive for heartworms from the time they were bitten. The only way a dog can get heartworms is through a mosquito bite. They can’t get it from being around another infected pet.

In the early stage of heartworm disease, there are no symptoms. As the diseased progresses, the pet will begin to have a cough and get tired after being active. Later, they will have a persistent cough and look sickly. They may have difficulty breathing and show signs of heart failure.

Treatment of Heartworm Disease

There are a few medications approved by the FDA to treatment a dog for heartworms. One type of medication is used to treat adult heartworms while another is designed to treat the heartworms before they become adults.

Treatments are expensive, and they are hard on the dog. The medications can cause blood clots in the lungs. The dog will need to make multiple trips to the vet, undergo blood tests and x-rays and receive a series of injections.

Prevention of Heartworm Disease

Prevention is the far better answer. There are many products available which have been approved by the FDA. They are all given under a vet’s prescription. Prevention medications won’t do anything for a pet that has already been infected, which is why vets test the animal before giving preventative medications.

These drugs may be given orally with either chewable or non-chewable tablets. Some medications are given as a topical liquid applied directly to the skin. One product is an injection given by the vet once every six or twelve months. Some of the drugs are effective against other parasites like fleas or roundworms.

Cats are not as likely to get heartworms as dogs because their bodies don’t make as good of hosts. It is more difficult to diagnose the disease in cats and they often don’t show symptoms. Cats can also get rid of heartworms on their own, but when a heartworm dies inside of a cat it can be fatal to the animal because it can cause shock.

Treatment of heartworms in cats is available with a few medications, but prevention is the far better choice. There aren’t as many medications available, but they may be given either orally or topically each month with a vet’s prescription.

You should talk to your vet if you’re concerned about the possibility of heartworm disease in your pet. Prevention is the best treatment to protect your pet’s health.