Blood Transfusions for Horses

donor horse. And as equine blood is not easily storable it is not bankable.
Matched blood is not easy to get said Paton. In addition horse blood does not store very well no more than 30 days. Its not often when a horse needs a transfusion but when it does a horse will need at least a gallon 3 78 litres of blood.
No one actually knows why equine blood doesnt store well. But the saving grace is that horses do not normally have a reaction to unmatched blood on the first transfusion. However if further transfusions are needed sourcing matched blood may become necessary as by that point a horse will have developed antibodies in response to the first transfused blood it received. But sourcing matched blood is problematic since sampling for a crossmatch from multiple horses is time consuming expensive and labour intensive when time itself is of the essence.
In a study done at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicines New Bolton Center scientists conducted a study to see whether blood samples stored for a month gave accurate results when used for crossmatching tests. They were really surprised when the results indicated that horse blood became more reactive the longer it sat in storage even just for 30 days. It had a tendency to give false positive results. The research was published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine.
In another study the scientists examined the lifespan of red blood cells in transfused blood. Using young racehorses from a Thoroughbred rescue organization where they were resting from lameness problems the researchers selected ten pairs of horses nine with incompatible blood and one pair with a blood type that matched well. Each horse had a transfusion of a gallon of fresh whole blood labelled with biotin a red blood cell
marker that would identify which cells were the transfused blood cells compared to the horses natural red blood cells.
Results showed that with wellmatched blood the halflife of a red blood cell was 33 5 days compared to an incompatible red blood cell that had a halflife of only 4 7 days. Horses that had transfusions with incompatible blood were possibly more likely to develop fevers but none of the reactions were severe or lifethreatening.
In reality when there is a need we use our hospital horse or my personal horse or a second horse belonging to the owner of the patient said Paton.