Asthma / Pulmonary Fibrosis

[susank521]

Hollywood, one of my Evac Cats, is about 3-1/2 years old and, like many of the Evac Cats, has what the vet terms as asthma, but to me is more comparable to whatever the feline version of pulmonary fibrosis is called.

Hollywood's is the worst case and she's down to about 30% lung capacity now. The vet recently put her on a prednisone regimen and we're currently at 2.5mg per day. The prednisone has not provided any noticeable improvement.

I am looking for ideas and recommendations on treatment options. Has anyone else treated this?

There's no way to know what the original cause was, but since so many of them have it in varying degrees, my feeling is it was caused from a virus or an environmental agent. Needless to say, I'd like to make her as comfortable as possible for as long as possible. Obviously it's progressive, but she still feels very well. She's active and playful, and eats like a horse, even before the steroids, and weighs-in at a whopping 5.5#. She's such a little survivor and tough as nails, so she'll fight as long as she can.

 

[scarlett 001]

Have you tried inhaled steroids? Helps the lungs without inundating the rest of the body with steroids unnecessarily - and of course it targets the lungs. You buy yourself an Aerokat (probably through your vet or online) and then purchase flovent. More costly than oral steroids, but it has advantages. My asthmatic cat has been well-controlled on flovent for 3 1/2 years now.

 

[susank521]

Scarlett, I haven't tried an inhaler. Do you think the inhaled steroids would benefit her? I guess what I'm asking is will a steroid of any kind help with fibrosis? I'm sure you're thinking that I should have asked the vet and you're right!

I'm getting confused between human and feline conditions and terms.

Is your kitty's asthma triggered by an allergen, like it is in humans? I think of asthma and I think of swelling. Is that the same for cats, for your kitty? The vet described Hollywood's condition as asthma when it's not swelling causing it, but scarring, but I thought we was just using that as a generic term to describe her difficult breathing. 

 

[scarlett 001]

I don't really know what causes Rexy's asthma. I am also confused by the various terms (isn't chronic bronchitis another term that fits somewhere in all of this??).

Initially the xrays showed some parts of the lung were kind of inflamed or something, and recent xrays do show scarring (cannot remember is there was scarring in the early xrays). So I just don't know about the environmental links or not. I just know that the flovent works well to solve her issues and limits steroid use which if used for many years can perhaps cause issues.

It took just a few weeks to a month to know that the inhaler was working.

 

[susank521]

Do you administer the flovent once daily? I would definitely prefer going that route rather than the oral steroid.

 

[scarlett 001]

 
Do you administer the flovent once daily? I would definitely prefer going that route rather than the oral steroid.

Flovent comes in 2 concentrations (the price reflects this). Rexy is on the higher concentration, and I needed to settle on 2 pumps, 2x per day to stabilize her. But you may manage to stabilize a cat on a lower dosage than this. Rexy took to it right away and I never had any issues getting her used to it. If you google "flovent cat" you an find lots of videos showing people giving it to their cats etc. It is relatively expensive, but much preferable to oral steroids for asthma.

 

[cprcheetah]

Definitely if you can swing it go with the inhaled steroids over the oral ones.  Munchie had Depo Medrol injections for a while.  He does much better on the Flovent, he gets 2 puffs twice a day.  He was having a lot of flare ups recently but we figured out he had a chronic sinus/nasal infection so we got that taken care of and he's doing much much better.  Here are a couple of websites that have a lot of good information on feline asthma  http://www.felineasthma.org/  & http://www.fritzthebrave.com/

 

[susank521]

Scarlett, I am so glad that you've found what helps Rexy, 3-1/2 years is a long time to keep anything well-controlled. And that's only thanks to your care. If the steroids will help Hollywood, inhaled is the route I will go. I think that it would be worth a try, anyway.

 

[susank521]

Thank you for the links @cprcheetah They did answer my question about whether asthma in cats is the same as in humans. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how a steroid of any kind would help with Hollywood's condition, but I guess it would address any possible swelling issue there could be. Does swelling accompany pulmonary fibrosis? Her brochial tubes look normal on the xrays (and she is very stressed at the vet), but would swelling inside the tubes even show on xrays?