What is Heartworm disease? Heartworm disease is a serious and potentially fatal condition caused by parasitic worms living in the arteries of the lungs and occasionally in the right side of the heart of dogs, cats and other species of mammals.
How Heartworm Happens: The Life Cycle
Mosquito bites dog, cat or other susceptible animal, and the infective larvae enter through the bite wound.
What Are the Signs of Heartworm Disease? For both dogs and cats, clinical signs of heartworm disease may not be recognized in the early stages, as the number of heartworms in an animal tends to accumulate gradually over a period of months and sometimes years and after repeated mosquito bites.
How Do You Detect Heartworm Disease? Heartworm infection in apparently healthy animals is usually detected with blood tests for a heartworm.
Prevention:
Because heartworm disease is preventable, it is recommended that pet owners take steps now to talk to their veterinarian about how to best protect their pets from this dangerous disease. Heartworm prevention is safe, easy and inexpensive. While treatment for heartworm disease in dogs is possible, it is a complicated and expensive process, taking weeks for infected animals to recover.
