[Spiritsmam]

Hi

Unfortunately I have a lot of experience with heartworm disease as I have adopted 6 heartworm positive dogs. All had severe worm loads - 1, Snow Princess, died within 12 hours of my rescuing her (caval syndrome), 2 were successfully treated and the other three had disease too advanced to be treated so were just put on a slow kill regime (Heartgard).

The protocol for treating heartworm disease is changing. I have had my dogs evaluated at NC State vet school, and here is what we did last year ...

Diagnostics: CBC, Chemistry profile, urinalysis, heartworm test, chest radiographs and echocardiogram (this for me is very important as it was the echo that showed the heart damage in the dogs that were not able to be treated where labwork and radiographs looked ok).

Pre-treat: Doxycycline (to kill off Wolbachia, a bacterium associated with heartworms, which results in reduction pulmonary effects of dying heartworms) and Heartgard for at least a month prior to adulticide treatment.

Treatment: Immiticide, 1 injection, followed by 2 further injections a month later. Note: My last dog developed a cough after the first injection, so the subsequent injections were postponed two months.

There is one thing you may want to consider before treating for heartworm disease. One of my GSD's tested positive on her first heartworm test at 18 month of age. She had been on prevention all her life which made us stop and think - either she was resistant to the heartworm medication or, she was a FALSE POSITIVE, which can occur on the snap tests. Apparently some dogs have a protein in their blood that interferes with the snap test.

We sent out a antigen/antibody test to the Animal Diagnostics lab in St Louis and it came back NEGATIVE, proving a false positive snap test.This test is apparently the gold standard so the cardiologists told me to never use snap tests again, instead to send out a serology each year (great - it's not a cheap test!)

Wishing you the best with Koda
Joanne