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Specialist Heart pig - Spironolactone use?

PiggyPapa

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Hi everyone! New member here as I scour the internet for ideas to help my heart pig.

My piggy Maple has been treated for her heart problems for about a year now and improvement was obvious from the start of treatment. With a combination of furosemide, benazapril, and pimobendan. Just last week we experienced a bit of an episode, with increased lethargy, reduced hay eating, and noticeable fatigue. The vet was seen and we increased her pimobendan but have reached the limit on most of these medications.

My question: does anyone have experience using spironolactone for heart pigs? I found one mention of it on this forum from a user named Adelle but not much else. I have seen some promising info in it's use for ferrets, but obviously that's a bit different. We are hoping to find a way to adjust her treatment and get her back to 100%. I really appreciate you time and attention.

Sincerely,
PiggyPapa
 

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I have no personal experience of it @PiggyPapa. But from looking at @Adelle 's posts it seems that she had a good experience on it.

Is the furosemide at the maximum dose? If not, then I think I would personally go down that route first.

Heart issues are still very new in piggies in my experience so you may end up just having to give it a try to see.
 
Thank you for the replies! She is currently taking .6ml of furosemide twice daily. With the occasional extra dose if she seems to need it. So I don't think we'd want to increase that any further. I'm thinking the spironolactone will provide the diuretic effect more consistently as I'm worried the furosemide is wearing off before her second dose and not clearing all the fluid built up. We are going to her vet today so we'll see what his thoughts are. Thanks again everyone!
 
Vet prescribed the spironolactone in addition to continuing the other medications. She'll get her first dose tonight. *Fingers crossed* I'll be sure to update on here once it's been a few days and we can tell if it's working!
 
Hi, I had a 6.5 year old piggy that was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She was on fortekor, vetmedin, frusemide and spironolactone. I let her go when her heart gave up the fight a little over 2 years later. Episodes of increased lethargy usually point to the heart first off, fluid issues are more obvious with increased respiratory effort. Have they tried increasing her heart meds first off? Spironolactone is a potassium sparing diuretic that works differently to frusemide, a loop diuretic. My girl was on frusemide every 8 hours, 12 hourly was never enough for her even at the beginning. Once 8 hourly doses of 5mg frusemide where no longer enough (check the strength of your medication to work out how many mg 0.6ml is), we added in spironolactone at 5mg every 24 hours (the recommended dose). However, once a day wasn't enough for her and she ended up having it every 16 hours (with every 2nd dose of frusemide.) Her fluid levels stayed down for a long time with this addition and her heart improved too, spironolactone has heart protective properties. My currently old girl is 8 in just over a week, with lung disease causing fluid build up and pressure on the heart. She takes frusemide every 8 hours, as 12 hourly wasn't enough for her either. We've recently upped the dose from 2mg to 2.5mg after a bout of laboured breathing and she's bounced back once again. Because her heart is affected, if any further increase in diuretics is required we will be going down the route of spironolactone. She isn't on heart meds as that isn't the primary issue, and although the lungs causing heart pressure will ultimately lead to congestive heart failure, she currently doesn't have it.

Another thing to consider is vegan co-enzyme q10. It's a supplement that can have great effects on heart function if tolerated well. Personally haven't used it as my heart piggy bloated with it, she had very sensitive digestion. My current girl is on vegan algae oil for epa/dha and omega fatty acids- this is for arthritis but is also good for heart health. I will be adding in co-enzyme q10 for her once we are fully stabilised as we are tweaking other things at the minute.

Hope this helps x
 
Has your little piggie had a heart scan? If you know what sort of heart issues you are treating then you are better in knowing what drugs are best to treat.

Spironolactone can be used in combination of all the drugs you are using. I would be concerned that at this point you are giving a lot of drugs already and that this may be more advanced. But without knowing exactly how bad it is I cannot really help with weather this drug will help or not. Best to speak to your vet and discuss further about prognosis and diagnostics if necessary.

x
 
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