5 Blood Transfusion in Small Ruminants

Transcript

Dear vets

In the previous presentations we discussed and dealt about the blood transfusion practices in bovines. Another important ruminant species is the small ruminants and anemia is again a common disease in the small Romanians. So, whether in the field level we can do blood transfusion for the small ruminants. Currently, not many places they do but there are field practices doing small ruminant blood transfusions. So, in this presentation we see about how to go with the blood transfusion in the small ruminants.

When we talk about the small Ruminants the history itself is very important. The first transfusion happened with the lamb to the human. So, this is how first transfusion happened somewhere in the year 16th century about 1692.

Now what is the basic reason to go with transfusion in the small ruminants. The internal parasites are the most important reason for example Hemonchus is the most important one for which blood transfusion is being done. And any external parasites uh besides internal parasites can cause severe anemia that requires blood transfusion. Similar to bovines there are certain blood groups in the small ruminants. So about seven blood group systems are there like A,B,C,D, M, R and X. Similar to cattle, the B system is highly polymorphic in the small Ruminants also. The R system is similar to theJ system in the cattle because it is soluble. Now one of the uniqueness about the M and L system is they are involved in the active red cell potassium transport and any polymorphism happening in the ML that produces sheep with varying erythrocyte potassium levels.

The other important thing we need to know about is the Neonatal isoerycthrolysis similar to bovines. It can happen in the lambs when you feed the lamb with bovine colostrum. In many practices, in many areas people used to feed bovine colostrum to small kid’s lambs. So they developed a neonatal isoerycthrolysis because there is a presence of antibodies to sheep isoerycthrolysis which is present in the bovine colostrum and this causes the isoerythrolysis. So we need to be very careful with that.

Now we move on to the next one Blood Groups in case of Goats. These are almost like similar to sheep and there are special laboratories available which types and helps to form us to identify the blood groups but not commonly available. There are five major systems of blood groups as far as goats are concerned so A, B, C the M and J. So here also in goats J is a soluble antigen as in case of cattle.

This is how a field blood collection. You can use the human blood bags what you get it in the commercial blood bags. You can use your human blood bag put the jugular vein prepare the jugular vein aesthetically and similar to any small practice put the needle into the jugular vein carefully and start the blood flow started collecting via into the blood bag and again the bag has to be keep on tilted so that uniform mixing up of the anticoagulants happens.

Now what are the basic parameters where you need to keep in mind. 10 to 20 ml per kg you can collect from a healthy donor. So you can safely start with 10 ml but if you need a higher blood you can go with the 20 ml and the collection at the rate of 10 to 15 ml equates to roughly about 500 to 700 ml for a goat weighing 50 kg. Many of the times it is comparatively lesser we don’t find 50 kg goat we’ll be finding less than 20 kg or 30 kg only and, all the human blood bags what you can use are for the human medicine practice they can be very well serving the purpose for our goat. There are some field practice they can collect the blood from the sterile IV bags which are added with the sodium citrate. For example 100 ml of four percent sodium citrate this can be added to a one liter bag. You yourself can make a bag, add about 100 ml of four percent sodium citrate to one liter bag and use this bag for collecting the blood. Now the most important point always is agitate I mean keep on turning the bag to prevent the clotting that happens inside.

Now once you collect it you can transfuse similar to your IV injection giving a jugular injection you just put a jugular catheter or the needle and start transducing the uh collected blood into that.

Now what are the basic transfusion tips you need to keep in mind when you are dealing with the small ruminants. Always go with this slow drip infusion right very very slow drip for the first 15 Minutes, because we need to know watch for transfusion reactions, if there is no transfusion reactions happening then we can go with the regular rate. Normally, reactions are rare in the small ruminants. We don’t see much often especially with the first transfusion the reactions are comparatively less, but the reactions will become very frequent if we are going for a subsequent transfusion or repeated transfusions. Similar to bovina practice you always keep it in mind Epinephrine. So Epinephrine will help to manage transfusion reaction. If there is any severe transfusion reaction occur you need to stop the blood that blood cannot be used possibly, you need to collect it from a different donor and again test it and use it. Recently there are papers emerging where some trial studies where they used bovine whole blood for Goat Anemia. So, these are all research studies probably in the future we may able to get the field level implications for such cross pieces transfusions. It may take another few years to get such results available for the field. And always keep it in mind transfusions are not total solutions it is only a temporary measure. You need to find out the cause for the anemia and treat that anemia and whenever you transfuse the entire Donor erythrocytes get cleared within the eight days. And similar to bovine practice always can go for the cross matching and find out if it is unfit you don’t use that and, monitor most importantly the heart rate, respiratory rate and the rectal temperature you need to monitor. Any changes in them then that may indicate the possibility for transfusing. So we need to monitor them every 30 minutes that will be good then hourly monitoring and even you can monitor up to 16 days after transfusion. Right. Sometimes, reactions can happen as a delayed reactions.

Now the commonest reaction here is tachycardia, tachypnea tremors fever and pruritus. So these are the commonly observed one sometimes that can be hematurian and hemoglobinuria. But almost 50 percent of the cases there will be hyperthermia. So that’s why we advise you to frequently monitor the rectal temperature whenever you do a transfusion reaction. The other important thing whenever you are using a stored blood there are every chances it even can also cause reactions. Stored Blood for example you are collecting blood you can use the CPDA -1 solutions and store the blood for 35 days right, but sometimes stored blood may have some sort of metabolic changes within that the using the stored blood may also produce some reactions we need to be very careful with that.

So in this presentation we saw about how to do small ruminants blood transfusion. We have additional reading material given to you can refer very well and many of the large animal practice journals are also having materials around boving blood transfusions and small remaining transfusions you can very well learn from them if you have any queries kindly let us know

Thank you