Blood Transfusions for Horses

Blood transfusions save lives and almost everyone knows the value of donating to the blood bank. But how many people think their animals could be blood donors too?
Dogs and cats can both be donors and there are a number of canine blood banks across Canada many centered at animal emergency clinics and hospitals or veterinary colleges. At the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna Italy a blood bank for dogs has been in operation for a decade.
Dogs with a minimum weight of 25 kg can donate blood and give up to 450 millilitres after a health check. Depending on their size cats can also give blood about 50 millilitres.

But what about horses?
Equine surgery can be traumatic. Maybe your horse has been injured in the field or while being ridden has emergency colic needs a sinus operation has problems with clotting disorders or is profusely bleeding because of a guttural pouch infection. When your horse is facing treatment and might need a blood transfusion some well laid plans will be in order.
Horses are different from humans dogs and cats said Dr. David Paton with Paton Martin Veterinary Services Ltd. in Langley B C. Horses have seven major blood types and there are a whole bunch of subtypes.
Humans have just three major blood types A B and O. However the horses blood groups include A C D K P Q and U. Then each group can have a variety of cell membrane proteins referred to as factors a b c d e f or g. So a blood type is defined as both a group and a factor Qa Pd etc.. Doing the math a horses blood profile can be any one of over 400000 combinations. As a result it is almost impossible for a veterinarian to source matched blood from a