Petcardia's Retrospective Review of patients with DCM
In order to better understand the prevalence and treatment of nutritional cardiomyopathy in our community, the team at Petcardia analyzed over 50 cases of presumed nutritional heart muscle disease encountered in our practice since May of 2017.
These 51 cases were identified from a pool of 485 cases that had been diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy related heart diseases including left ventricular dilation, dilated cardiomyopathy, and diastolic dysfunction. In order to narrow our focus to only cases of presumed nutritional dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs we excluded 132 cases for the following reasons: confounding health/medical factors present (62); dog breeds that have a high propensity for DCM (39); cats (15); confounding diet related factors (20). 298 cases were removed from this retrospective study because they had no echocardiographic recheck data at the time of analysis. The remaining 51 cases had heart muscle disease that could not be explained by any commonly known causes of DCM other than nutrition.
What we found is that the vast majority (48 out of 51 patients) improved with at least a diet change. The majority of these patients (46 out of 48) were also placed on taurine supplementation. Nutritional cardiomyopathy affected animals aged 17 months to 14 years and improvement was seen as early at 3 months and as late as 1 year and 7 months after diagnosis. While 10 out of 51 patients had severe disease with evidence of congestive heart failure, we are encouraged to see that most of these patients continue to improve with proper cardiac medications and diet alterations.
We believe that a large part of the improvement that we are seeing in our pets is secondary to stringent recommendations when switching diets. As a team, Petcardia recommends feeding our pets diets that fit the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) guidelines. More specifically, among these guidelines are that diets are manufactured by companies that employ veterinary nutritionists and that the foods undergo feeding trials as well as digestibility studies prior to being available to the public. While the true cause of nutritional cardiomyopathy remains unknown, we are hopeful in knowing that this is a reversible disease process in some dogs with at least a diet change and proper symptomatic medical management.
These 51 cases were identified from a pool of 485 cases that had been diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy related heart diseases including left ventricular dilation, dilated cardiomyopathy, and diastolic dysfunction. In order to narrow our focus to only cases of presumed nutritional dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs we excluded 132 cases for the following reasons: confounding health/medical factors present (62); dog breeds that have a high propensity for DCM (39); cats (15); confounding diet related factors (20). 298 cases were removed from this retrospective study because they had no echocardiographic recheck data at the time of analysis. The remaining 51 cases had heart muscle disease that could not be explained by any commonly known causes of DCM other than nutrition.
What we found is that the vast majority (48 out of 51 patients) improved with at least a diet change. The majority of these patients (46 out of 48) were also placed on taurine supplementation. Nutritional cardiomyopathy affected animals aged 17 months to 14 years and improvement was seen as early at 3 months and as late as 1 year and 7 months after diagnosis. While 10 out of 51 patients had severe disease with evidence of congestive heart failure, we are encouraged to see that most of these patients continue to improve with proper cardiac medications and diet alterations.
We believe that a large part of the improvement that we are seeing in our pets is secondary to stringent recommendations when switching diets. As a team, Petcardia recommends feeding our pets diets that fit the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) guidelines. More specifically, among these guidelines are that diets are manufactured by companies that employ veterinary nutritionists and that the foods undergo feeding trials as well as digestibility studies prior to being available to the public. While the true cause of nutritional cardiomyopathy remains unknown, we are hopeful in knowing that this is a reversible disease process in some dogs with at least a diet change and proper symptomatic medical management.