Heart Worms

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of heartworm in dogs, now known to occur throughout the world in many species of host, was first described in “…1850 in Philadelphia, by Physician J. Leidy who assigned the name Filaria canis cordis,” but was later changed in the early 1900s (Boreham, 2). Since then, heartworm disease in dogs and cats has become a problem affecting household pets around the world.
Adult Dirofilaria are unsegmented round worms described as having an appearance similar to spaghetti. According to Boreham, “ the genus Dirofilaria consists of elongate, thin filarioid nematodes, whitish in coloration, with bluntly rounded anterior extremeties, rudimentary buccal capsules without lips, small cephalic papillae and an abbreviated esophagus indistinctly differentiated into muscular and glandular regions” (2). They range in length from about 17 cm, in the case of the males to about 27 cm in the case of the females (Boreham, 2). Hence, females may even attain the width of 1.0 to 1.3mm (Boreham, ...

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