Female young adult cat diagnosed with DCM

My cat has just been diagnosed with DCM and has now been prescribed clopidogrel and Fortekor. She will also be kept more inside from now on; but I wanted to ask about the long-term prognosis of DCM with female cats and if this can be well managed moving into the future?   Her symptoms came on roughly three days ago. She has been to the vet and had blood tests and a heart scan (we have only known of this condition for about 24-hours). Her symptoms are the following: tiredness, lack of appetite,weight loss, nearly 1Kg and now weighs roughly 3.6 kg (used to be over 4kg), and just being a bit down. She is usually very vocal and energetic, but there has been almost a sudden change to being subdued.

Hello - I'm sorry it has taken me a few days to reply, but I did not know the answers to this question.  A retrospective study was done by some vets (several of whom taught me at vet-school) who did a retrospective study of 106 cats (1994-2001)  L Ferasin 1, C P Sturgess, M J Cannon, S M A Caney, T J Gruffydd-Jones, P R Wotton.  They reviewed 106 cats presenting to Bristol with cardiomyopathy between September 1994 and September 2001.  "Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) was the most common form seen (57.5%), followed by restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM) (20.7%), dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) (10.4%) and unclassified cardiomyopathy (UCM) (10.4%).  The median survival time for 73 cats for which follow-up data was available was 300 days. A greater survival time was observed for cats with UCM (925 days) when compared with those with HCM (492 days), RCM (132 days) or DCM (11 days)......."   However, this data is over 20 years old now.   More to follow.

It sounds as though your cats' condition is now clinical (as opposed to pre-clinical - i.e. it is affecting her directly).  In DCM that affects cats clinically, the heart walls do not contract as tightly as they should, making the 'pump' less efficient and leading to tiredness etc. Damage to the shape of the heart is often thought to be irreversible.  Whether, in this patient's particular case, meds and supplements might affect survival and to what extent, is a question for your vet and - if they can not say - then a specialist.  Questions such as, 'in my cats' case, how high do you think the chances are of meds making a significant difference?' may be helpful.  I have read a few articles on your behalf and the results of which were not encouraging as I'd hoped, but given that this caswe is already under the care of a vet who scans hearts, they are best placed to look this up for you. Please would you let us know what they find?