Animal health pros frequently challenge the status quo. In the face of a heartworm infection, melarsomine has received the American Heartworm Society recommendations along with steroid and antithrombotic agents, as needed. But melarsomine sometimes has limited availability or is unavailable in many countries. Thus, many slow-kill protocols have been circulated as possible alternatives when melarsomine is unattainable. Amara Estrada, DVM, DACVIM, summarizes research on the slow-kill protocol in this literature review article.
Source: Clinician’s Brief, April 2018, Link.
Estrada shares key pearls from the literature to put into practice:
- The slow-kill method does not appear to be an effective protocol for managing heartworm disease
- Use of biomarkers as a tool to provide additional or supplementary prognostic information when other tools are not available may be helpful
- The slow-kill method appears to reduce biomarkers associated with cardiac, systemic, and pulmonary inflammation but not such that it would be recommended as initial therapy