Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Sal the 1st — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 22:24:19 GMT

[quote user="Lisa Goodship"]

Fantastic thank you...[quote user="Sal the 1st"]

doesnt anybody do major cross matches in practice anymore? - they arent that difficult to do

maybe not applicable in a cat case because you would have no idea of typing but a useful to know about and be able to do

major = recipient serum + donor rbcs , haemolysis or agglutination following incubation means incompatible but wont show up low titre antibodies

minor = recipient rbcs + donor serum , haemolysis or agglutination following incubation means incompatible

control = recipient serum + recipient rbcs - if you get agglutination or haemolysis on this one it usually means something like AIHA in which case you will struggle to find anything bloodwise that will help.

I am all for kits and things to make the job easier but if they arent there the 'longhand way' whilst not giving you all the information can still save lives

[/quote]

Never knew you could do this!!

Will write it down for future use if required.

[/quote]

but dont forget it isnt the same as typing.if you can get typed blood would always use this. But if you cant type your blood and your patient cant afford to wait at least you are trying to establish that the blood you are wanting to give isnt going to kill your patient

when the chips are down its quite surprising what you can manage to achieve when you need to even in the most basic of places

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Lisa Goodship — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 21:32:23 GMT

Fantastic thank you...[quote user="Sal the 1st"]

doesnt anybody do major cross matches in practice anymore? - they arent that difficult to do

maybe not applicable in a cat case because you would have no idea of typing but a useful to know about and be able to do

major = recipient serum + donor rbcs , haemolysis or agglutination following incubation means incompatible but wont show up low titre antibodies

minor = recipient rbcs + donor serum , haemolysis or agglutination following incubation means incompatible

I am all for kits and things to make the job easier but if they arent there the 'longhand way' whilst not giving you all the information can still save lives

[/quote]

Never knew you could do this!!

Will write it down for future use if required.

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Lisa Goodship — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 21:29:37 GMT

Thank you will look into these and see if we can get some

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Steph Worsley — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 17:21:47 GMT

hey we use the rapid vet H test kits (there are others available) they are distributed by Woodley here

Link to feline instructions: http://www.rapidvet.com/feline_info.html

link to canine instructions: http://www.rapidvet.com/canine_info.html

Hope these help

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Sal the 1st — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 10:09:49 GMT

doesnt anybody do major cross matches in practice anymore? - they arent that difficult to do

maybe not applicable in a cat case because you would have no idea of typing but a useful to know about and be able to do

major = recipient serum + donor rbcs , haemolysis or agglutination following incubation means incompatible but wont show up low titre antibodies

minor = recipient rbcs + donor serum , haemolysis or agglutination following incubation means incompatible

I am all for kits and things to make the job easier but if they arent there the 'longhand way' whilst not giving you all the information can still save lives

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Lisa Goodship — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 06:35:33 GMT

Thank you for the above, really interesting.

Please excuse my ignorance, do the typing cards you mentioned above, enable you to do 'in-house' testing to establish individual blood types? Just curious as sounds something that clinics would benefit from having, are they expensive, difficult to use? Wonder if we have them here!

Yes the clinic is about 2hrs from any lab that could run the test and I think it was one of those end of evening consults!!

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Steph Worsley — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 22:33:56 GMT

there are 3 known types of blood in the cat A, B and AB, B's are very rare but if you were to give them type A blood it could be fatal as they already have antigens to type A. This excerpt from the Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine explains this a bit better

"Acute hemolytic transfusion reactions can develop when a dog or cat having preexisting antibodies to erythrocyte antigens undergoes transfusion with erythrocytes displaying those antigens. Binding of alloantigens (antigens occurring in a genetically different individual of the same species) by preformed alloantibodies leads to complement activation and intravascular hemolysis of the transfused erythrocytes.

In dogs, alloantibodies are produced during pregnancy, parturition, or after blood transfusion. Blood typing helps to identify potentially antigenic glycoproteins or glycolipids that are components of the erythrocyte membrane. Although 12 or more DEAs have been identified, DEA 1.1, 1.2, and 7 are the most likely to induce alloantibody formation. However, transfusion reactions due to DEA 4 and the Dal blood types have been reported.^[95,96] Dogs do not have naturally occurring alloantibodies; thus initial exposure will not likely cause an acute transfusion reaction. However, once alloantibodies have been formed subsequent to exposure to alloantigens, only a small quantity of alloantigen is required to cause a transfusion reaction; there are enough erythrocytes and erythrocyte membrane fragments in fresh-frozen plasma to cause clinically significant acute reactions.

Feline erythrocyte antigens are termed type-A, type-B, or type-AB. The erythrocyte antigen Mik has also been recently described in domestic shorthair cats.^[97] The incidence of these blood types varies among cat breeds and geographic locations, with type A consistently being the most prevalent blood type. Type-B cats have been most commonly identified in Australia, Turkey, Japan, and Europe.^[98-100] Breeds with increased prevalence of type-B blood include Abyssinian, Birman, Japanese Bobtail, Persian, Himalayan, Somali, Sphinx, Cornish Rex, British Shorthair, and Devon Rex; prevalence of blood types within breeds is influenced by geographic location.^[101,102] Type-AB cats are rare, and they do not produce alloantibodies.

In cats, alloantibodies occur naturally; however, the epitopes that induce these antibodies have not been identified. A severe reaction may occur on the initialexposure to blood, without prior sensitization by previous transfusion or pregnancy. The naturally occurring anti-B antibodies of type-A cats are weak agglutinins and hemolysins; if type-B blood is transfused into a type-A cat, the erythrocyte half-life falls to 2.1 days. Clinical signs associated with this mismatch are usually mild, and may include listlessness, tachycardia, tachypnea, hemoglobinemia, and hemoglobinuria. Anti-A alloantibodies present in type-B cats appear to be strong hemolysins and agglutinins and can induce severe acute hemolytic transfusion reactions. If type-A blood is transfused into a type-B cat, the erythrocyte half-life falls to minutes to hours, and potentially fatal systemic anaphylaxis and hemolysis can follow. Clinical signs may include hypoventilation, apnea, vomiting, diarrhea, vocalization, arrhythmias, hemoglobinemia, and hemoglobinuria. Shock, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, multiorgan dysfunction syndrome, and DIC may ensue.

Blood typing and major cross matching reduce the possibility of a hemolytic transfusion reaction.^[93] It is not necessary to blood type or cross match a dog before the first transfusion. Sensitization occurs within 3 to 5 days of initial transfusion, and subsequent transfusion should be preceded by typing and major cross match. For cats, blood typing and major cross match should precede all transfusions.^[102,103]"

Since my first post regarding this I have found a ittle bit more about the back story, apparently where this practice was located they didn't have access to the typing cards that we have and it would have taken a minimum of 24 hours to get the typing back, which the cat did not have.....this was all because I questioned the transfusion at work and everyone agreed that it would have been more dangerous to transfuse with unknown type to unknown type cat blood than dog to cat blood......However it should not be done on a routine basis due to the potential of cross species disease transmission......that is how HIV first appeared in the human population from blood transfusions from monkeys

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Lisa Goodship — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 20:49:58 GMT

[quote user="Fuzzyduck"]Well I guess the proofs in that the cat survived, but everything in my head tells me giving blood from a different species entirely has to be more risky than the same species.

[/quote]

I thought the same thing!!

If I remember rightly, please correct me if i'm wrong, there are only 2 types of cat blood, compared to 7 in a dog ? Surley the chances of getting the cat type wrong are far less then the risk of using dog blood to transfuse?!

Good on them though love a success story

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Fuzzyduck — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 19:59:24 GMT

Well I guess the proofs in that the cat survived, but everything in my head tells me giving blood from a different species entirely has to be more risky than the same species.

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Steph Worsley — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:25:52 GMT

[quote user="Fuzzyduck"]I would have thought it was less risky to give another cats blood without typing than a dogs blood?

[/quote]

actually no it's not they aren't like dogs who can all have one transfusion of negative blood no matter what their own blood type, cats already have anti-bodies against the other type of blood so it can actually be very dangerous to give a cat blood without typing both recipient and donor first.

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Fuzzyduck — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:04:43 GMT

I would have thought it was less risky to give another cats blood without typing than a dogs blood?

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Steph Worsley — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 01:01:45 GMT

in this day and age where it is relatively easy to do a cat blood donation ( speaking as both a nurse having performed a LOT of them and also as an owner of 1 cat who donated very regularly and 2 other cats who have donated occasionally - one is going to be a more regular donor now) there is NO excuse to be using another species blood....for one thing the types are completely different and cats can react badly given the wrong type of cat blood!

It is actually a shame that there is no complete closed collection system available for cats yet, I hope in the future there will be but for now it is a semi-open collection system so the blood cannot be stored for future use like with dogs.

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Charley83 — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 15:36:49 GMT

[quote user="Mark Hedberg"]

Interestingly enough, (and this goes back to rusty lectures in uni, so feel free to correct me if more modern information is available) sometimes you can get lucky like that - as the cat's immune system has never seen dog blood before, it's not sensitized to produce antibodies against dog blood types. So the blood can survive long enough in the cat for the cat to get better - but a repeat blood transfusion of the same dog blood type should be avoided at all costs, as the immune system will recognize the blood type now.

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I remember talking to the vet regarding this on a work experience placement - exactly what you said Mark - might get away with it once but only once.

Re: Dog to Cat blood transfusion...?

Mark Hedberg — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 12:28:21 GMT