New Drug for Heart Disease - New Hope?

[Melsmom]

My vet has been waiting for this drug to become available to us, which he just received last week. I am hoping this will help my Mel with Cardiomopathy. He just started taking Pimobendan along with Enalapril and Lasix. Here is what I found on the internet:

The study and use of Pimobendan in dogs is still relatively new but the results of small studies have been very positive. The limited literature is consistently favorable regarding improvement in exercise tolerance, quality of life and heart failure score. Increases in survival time appear to vary somewhat with breed. For some breeds including Doberman Pinschers, the increase in survival time is dramatic. Improvement in clinical status should occur within the first month of treatment. There is an excellent review of Pimobendan and other new cardiac drugs in the 2005 ACVIM Proceedings. There is a great deal of interest in this drug and larger studies should be being published in the near future.

Precautions

• At this time there are no specific precautions associated with the use of Pimobendan. Pimobendan appears to have fewer adverse outcome reports when compared to Ramipril.

We can only hope Anyone else have their dog on this drug? I am curious if this is as good as it sounds.

[Sharon Marples]

It will be very interesting to see how this works. It's not a cure, but sounds as if it will defray the symptoms and give the dog a longer life (quoted as being approximately 9 months by one source) if given along with other meds and a good diet and exercise program.

Here are a few links I came up with that contain more information. This is a drug that has been used on humans as well.

http://www.vetmedpub.com/vetmed/arti....jsp?id=378905

http://www.wedgewoodpharmacy.com/mon...pimobendan.asp

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/60791.php