Preventive Services: Physaloptera (Stomach Worm) in Dogs and Cats

Worms are parasites that live inside your pet’s body and take nutrients away from them. They do so by either directly eating your pet’s tissue or feeding on their blood vessels. Different worms can occupy different parts of your pet’s body from their lungs to their gastrointestinal system. Depending on the particular worm and your individual pet’s health, worms can cause little to no disease or serious sickness. Some worms cause anemia, others diarrhea, and in serious cases, others can cause death if left untreated. It is also possible for your canine and feline to be infected with different types of worms at the same time, resulting in more severe sickness.

Thus, it is necessary to work with our veterinarian at Springwood Animal Hospital for Preventive Services to prevent your animals from being infected in the first place and getting treatment quickly.

What are Physaloptera?

Physaloptera is a particular type of worm that affects cats and dogs. Stomach worms live in the stomach and beginning of the small intestine of your furry companions. Adult stomach worms are stout, pink to tan in color and 3-6 cm in length. Once ingested by your cat or dog, stomach worms connect themselves to their stomach or small intestine where they feed off your pet’s tissue and blood. Stomach worms use their mouths, which are furnished with several sets of teeth, to bite into your pet’s tissue. Notwithstanding this damage, some cats and dogs do not show signs of disease when infected while others may have chronic periodic vomiting, weight loss, and anorexia.

 How is Physaloptera different from other worms?

There are various types of worms that affect the gastrointestinal tract of cats and dogs. Among these, stomach worms are the only worms to predominately live in the stomach of their feline and canine pets. Other worms, such as tapeworms and hookworms, mainly hold the small intestines of dogs and cats. Moreover, unlike roundworms, stomach worms do not have a predisposition for infecting certain age groups over others. In terms of feeding, stomach worms are similar to hookworms as both have teeth they use to bite into the tissue, but stomach worms feed off both tissue and blood whereas hookworms only utilize the latter. Finally, stomach worms are less likely than other worms to cause sickness but when they do, vomiting is usual.

How does my pet get infected?

Physaloptera is sustained in wildlife carnivore species such as coyotes, wolves, foxes, bobcats, and raccoons. These wild carnivores pass stomach worm eggs in their wastes. Other hosts ingest these eggs and become infected. These hosts include the German cockroach, field cricket, camel cricket, flour beetle, and ground beetles. Additionally, small animals can eat these insect hosts and become infected; these include rodents, hedgehogs, lizards, frogs, and snakes. Your pet can be infected by eating any of these infected insects or creatures. Luckily, your dog or cat cannot be infected by ingesting worm eggs in the environment or through interaction with affected wildlife carnivores.

Disease Caused

Once your pet via an infected host ingests Physaloptera worms, these worms attach themselves to the lining of your pet’s stomach or small intestine. From there, Physaloptera will feed on your pet’s tissue and blood. As they travel from one feeding site to another, they may cause bleeding wounds and inflammation. Despite this, some pets may not show any symptoms of the disease. On the other hand, other pets may have a chronic widespread infection of their stomach, which results in vomiting, anorexia, and dark sticky wastes with partially digested blood (melena). Vomiting, particularly chronic and intermittent, is the most common sign of infection and may include one or more worms.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis of Physaloptera can be difficult. One method is searching for stomach worm eggs using a fecal float. While a positive result means your pet is infected, a negative outcome does not rule them out because pets infected with stomach worms often have a low number of worms, sometimes as low as one. Thus, a fecal float may not accurately define whether your pet has stomach worms or not.

Another method to examine stomach worms in your pets is to observe their vomit for any worms or eggs. It may be useful to take pictures if you do see worms so our veterinarian can correctly identify them. Stomach worms in your pet’s vomit are diagnostic but lack of them does not show infection.

Finally, endoscopy can be used to examine stomach worms. While a more costly option than other methods, an endoscopy allows your veterinarian to directly visualize and eliminate worms in your pet’s gastrointestinal region. It is possible to miss worms, however, as they may be covered by mucus, ingested food, and stomach folds. Thus, it is also possible to miss an examination with this method as well.

Treatment and Prognosis

Treatment includes either physical removal of worms by endoscopy followed by anthelmintic therapy or anthelmintic therapy only (anthelmintic kill worms).

An endoscopy allows contemporary diagnosis and treatment because worms can be visualized and removed at the same time. If all the worms are detected and removed, then your pet’s symptoms may resolve shortly after with anthelmintic therapy alone. Endoscopy, however, is more costly and is not always reliable. Stomach worms can be difficult to visualize, particularly immature larvae, which are small and easily overlooked. Thus, endoscopy used in combination with anthelmintic therapy gives the benefit of providing a definitive diagnosis when stomach worms are found.

Because the examination of stomach worms is challenging, it is often suitable to treat your pet for stomach worms without performing endoscopy or finding eggs on a fecal float. This option is economic and will kill any stomach worms if your pet has any. One drawback is that this option will not be effective if your pet does not have stomach worms and is sick for another reason. Drugs used to eliminate stomach worms in your cat or dog include ivermectin, pyrantel pamoate, and fenbendazole. Additional drugs that may be useful for your pet include anti-nausea medications to reduce their vomiting and gastro protectants. You should feel free to Contact us for a Medical examination of your pet.

With proper therapy, the prognosis is excellent. The success of treatment can be monitored by resolution of your pet’s symptoms, repeated fecal exams, or repeated gastric endoscopy examinations. Out of all these ways to track your pet’s response to therapy, monitoring whether their symptoms improve and eventually go away is economic and reliable. Stomach worms’ eggs are difficult to find on fecal floats and a negative result does not indicate your pet is not infected. Similarly, while endoscopy is more reliable it is still not completely accurate and can miss worms.

Prevention

The best way to overcome your dog or cat’s risk of being infected with stomach worms is to prevent them from eating the insects and animals that carry the worms, which includes preventing them from hunting and scavenging. You can do so by keeping your cat indoors and your dog on a chain or in a fenced yard to limit their contact with infected animals. With this in mind, small beetles and other insects can find their way into your home, and thus there is always a possibility your pet can become infected.

Pet owners are free to visit our Animal clinic in Whitby. We have the best vets at a reasonable veterinary facility with long ranges of involvement who have taken care of their responsibilities in the analytic administrations staggeringly.