Hi! Nancy and lovemycanines, just saw this, I hope your dogs are still doing ok. My 6-year-old dog was diagnosed with idiopathic chylothorax in April 2013. We tried the low fat diet and rutin for several weeks and they were removing about 1 liter of fluid every 2 weeks. After several weeks we opted for the surgery (thoracic duct ligation and pericardiectomy). Lots of complications followed, long story short, the chyle came back & the surgery didn’t work.
They put a pleural port in (the port goes under the skin on the side and the attached long tube goes between the ribs and floats in the chest cavity) so we could drain the fluid at home. A lot less painful & stressful on her than chest taps. We’ve been draining her twice a week and getting about 2 liters of chyle per week (huge increase from what it started at). She is on Royal Canin Gastointestinal Low Fat food (prescription) and still takes 1000mg of rutin 3 times a day. I tried going up to 1500mg of rutin 3 times a day for several months but noticed no difference in the amount of fluid.
If I had to make the decision today, I’d go with the pleural port. It’s a lot less invasive than the surgery and a lot less expensive. Didn’t know about it until after the fact but if you’re dealing with this, you might want to look into it and ask your vet (most have never dealt with chylothorax).
My dog looks & acts fine; you’d never know there was any problem – eats well, plays, happy, active, etc. But now with removing the chyle, her protein levels are low. Vet can’t really do anything and she suggested a nutritionist. The nutritionist has not dealt with chylothorax before but researched it and said that there is a human product called Vivonex t.e.n. that is an amino acid that bypasses digestion and “should” help raise protein levels. Haven’t tried it yet; it’s about $10 a day but if it works it should show results in 10 days. She also said that a high fiber diet might help & suggested metamucil. Have to talk to vet about all this.
Wish you good luck with this. It has been a nightmare all around and very frustrating because there’s so little info available, even for people with the condition.
