Heartworm in Dogs - What You Need To Know

Heartworm is a very serious condition in dogs, and testing for heartworm should form a part of your dog’s yearly wellness examination. Of course, heartworm diagnoses do not follow a schedule and your dog may contract heartworm between visits.

As a result, you must be able to identify the symptoms to prevent irreversible damage.

What is heartworm?

As the name suggests, a heartworm is a worm in your dog’s heart. This is a parasitic infection where the heartworm causes physical damage to the heart as t moves along the pulmonary artery and/or the body’s immune response to the foreign object causes damage through inflammation and other side effects

Symptoms

Unfortunately, not all dogs show clinical signs of heartworm disease and the condition may only be identified during a checkup. This is what makes this condition so scary. With that being said, symptoms ranging from mild to severe include:

• Coughing
• Decreased energy or stamina
• Shortness of breath while exercising
• Excessive coughing
• Coughing up blood
• Spike in respiratory rate
• Trouble breathing
• Abdominal swelling (a sign of right-sided heart failure)
• Internal inflammation
• Increased blood pressure
• Liver and kidney damage
• Blood clots (especially due to worms dying)
• Heart failure

Cause

Dogs contract heartworms through bites from an infected mosquito. Once bitten, the larvae mature and burrow through the dog’s tissue. It eventually finds its way to the heart and lives in the pulmonary artery.

Prevention

Preventing heartworm disease includes the use of medication that prevents the larvae from growing into large worms that can cause serious damage. This sometimes comes in the form of a combination medicine that prevents other problems like fleas, ticks, and intestinal worms.