From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2001-08-03 20:09:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] VETS: Help or Help direct me
On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, meesh meesh wrote:
> I just wondered what your experience with Enacard has been
> with respect to it causing renal compromise/damage in ferrets?
OK, I'm not a vet, and I can't answer the actual question. How's that for
inspiring confidence? LOL. OK, getting to my point...
My ferret Sunny has very very severe dilated cardiomyopathy and is about 7
or 8 months into it. When she was initially diagnosed and we started her
drug regimine, Enacard was one of the first things we tried, but she
really didn't improve much on it. She was switched to Lotensin
(benazepril), which is not approved in dogs (let alone ferrets), but is
another ACE inhibitor. It worked much better on her. I bring it up
because it is excreted through the liver rather than the kidneys, so it is
an option when there might be kidney disease would make trying Enacard a
risky proposition.
On heart docs. My vet has consulted with a few cardiologists at this
point; the first one was Dr. Goodwin in Florida. His website is
http://www.vetheart.com/ and he does consult, although it can take him a
little while to get back (understandably a busy guy). He has a terrific
article on that website that you can find by following the link "Common
Cardiac Diseases" that I find myself referring back to time and time
again. It has an amazing amount of info, understandable to the me as a
layperson, rolled up into one package. May not be so helpful to vets and
vet students, but for the sake of the archives I wanted to mention it.
:-) More recently my vet has consulted with the cardiologists at our
local vet school in our area, and they've been great too and can tell her
what the latest research in dog/cat medicine says. Then we can patch it
up with what is known about ferrets on a more anecdotal level, and try to
do our best from there.
Good luck!
-Pam S.