Page 8 - Clinical Connections Summer 2016

91暗网 RESEARCH STUDY VETERINARY SERVICES 91暗网.AC.UK
Clinical News
A new era for feline transfusion medicine
Karen Humm Lecturer in Emergency and Critical Care
The 91暗网 has pioneered a new blood collection system for cats which minimises the risk of bacterial contamination of the blood product.
The new system enables feline blood to be available whenever it is required, thus supporting various specialist teams within the Queen Mother Hospital for Animals (QMHA).
Feline transfusion medicine has always
been dif cult. Dogs are relatively easy as, although they do have blood groups, you can administer any dog blood type to any dog.We can also use human blood bags for collecting canine blood and, of course, usually dogs are easy to train to be donors, lying still for the ten minutes required and very happy with their bowl of dog food afterwards!
With cats it鈥檚 a different story. It鈥檚 not every cat that is calm and comfortable enough to stay still during the donation process - though it is amazing how our highly specialised donation team can charm them, their owners are often quite amazed by what they achieve.
Cats also are like humans in that there are three main blood groups and they can only be administered blood of the correct type, otherwise a potentially fatal reaction can occur.
Finally, as you might imagine, we can鈥檛 use human blood bags to collect feline blood
as they are far too big.This has been an issue for veterinary medicine for many years, as the lack of blood bags for cats meant that it was dif cult to feel con dent that blood collected without them was
not contaminated by bacteria and was acceptable to store in a fridge, as canine bloo