Heartworm Prevention vs. Treatment
The most important part of prevention and treatment is compliance. You cannot play around with the timetable or the instructions.
PREVENTION (click to learn more about heartworms)
We get asked this question a lot. Yep, I see why you may be confused but the answer is easy once you have these facts,
• Every dog is at risk of contracting heartworm disease because all it takes is a bite from an infected mosquito.
• The only way to prevent your dog from getting heartworm disease is to give your dog prevention as directed, and without any lapses.
• There are oral, topical, and injectable preventions, and all the choices are effective so long as you don’t skip any months. Heartworm disease is almost 100% preventable, but if your dog is diagnosed with heartworm disease, he must be treated in one or two ways.
TREATMENT (click to learn more about treatment)
• If your dog is diagnosed with heartworm disease, you must begin treatment immediately. The damage to a dog’s heart, lungs, and vessels will continue until all the adult worms are destroyed and reabsorbed by the dog’s body.
• There is no certainty, even after the dog is free of heartworms, that the damage from the disease will reverse. Diagnostic testing by a vet can estimate any damage that exists.
• There are two primary treatment options, fast kill and slow kill. The confusion comes in because one of the treatments, slow kill, employs a chemical, moxidectin, used in some brand of preventions. When moxidectin is used along with a month of an antibiotic, doxycycline, or minocycline, this is what we call slow kill, and it is over 98% effective.
• Fast kill uses an arsenical-based chemical, melarsomine. Melarsomine is not Moxidectin, another point of confusion. Slow kill can also be injectible using ProHeart, but the injections for the fast and slow kill are not similar chemicals. Fast kill is over 98% effective. The main difference between slow and fast kill is that slow kill takes longer, which gives the worms more opportunities to cause internal damage to the dog.
