Urs Giger, PD Dr. med. vet. Dipl. ACVIM & ECVIM-CA, Dipl. ECVCP
Transfusion Center and Penn Animal Blood Bank, Section of Medical Genetics
School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Transfusion support is also critical for the feline patient, most commonly to correct anemia and less often bleeding. Nevertheless, blood transfusions are overall still less frequently administered to cats than dogs for a variety of reasons. Compared to canine transfusion medicine, cats can tolerate anemia better, they still get somewhat less medical attention, except for rodenticide toxicity and hepatopathies they bleed less severely, recruiting healthy donors is more difficult (occult heart disease, viral infections), blood collection requires sedation and special small bag collection systems, component therapy is less commonly practiced in clinics, cats have important naturally occurring alloantibodies and may experience life-threatening complications with a first transfusion, and the anemic cat is more sensitive to volume overload. During this session several peculiarities about feline transfusion medicine will be presented emphasizing the practical aspects of feline blood typing and crossmatching, donor selection and screening for infectious diseases, special blood collection techniques and component therapy.