This is a drop of blood under the microscope. This patient had heart worm and the arrow is pointing to a heart worm larvae (baby heart worm).
Heart worm life-cycle:♻️
Heart worm is transmitted by mosquito🦟. When a mosquito bites a heartworm infected dog, it ingested the larvae. The larvae then develops into infective stage within the mosquito and transmits to other dogs/cats during feeding. The larvae takes about 6-7 months in the tissue and bloodstream to mature, and it ends up becoming an adult worm in the heart of the patient hence the name heartworm. Usually a few heartworms in dogs don’t cause significant clinical signs but when the worm burden increases, the clinical signs become more severe. Clinical signs included exercise intolerance, shortness of breath, cyanosis, fluid buildup in the abdomen or even sudden death.
-Medical tips-
Heartworm antigen test is testing for heartworm female reproductive tract antigen and can give false positive and negative. I always do microfilaria test to double confirm my diagnosis as it’s very easy to do.
Microfilaria test🩸 – Put a drop of blood on the microscope slide and put a cover slide on top, then look at it under the microscope.
*Although it is rare, cats can get heartworm disease and they usually present with different clinical signs. I will explain more in depth in future post *😿