Veterinary Clinical Medicine-I (General and Systemic)

TRANSFUSION THERAPY

• Only blood type compatible blood should be administered. Thus, patient and blood donors should be typed with simple in practice or laboratory methods, and previously transfused animals also need to be crossmatched to assure compatibility and prevent transfusion reactions. As canine blood donors should not have received any blood products previously their plasma should not contain any alloantibodies. However, cats do have naturally occurring alloantibodies and a particularly plasma from any type B cats contain very strong anti-A antibodies. Thus plasma transfusions should also be blood type matched.