Expert veterinary care for every stage of your pet’s life.
Emergency: 617-522-7282
Poison Control: 888-426-4435
Bringing pets and people together.
Advocate for animals, volunteer, or get help for your pet with our compassionate community services.
The amount of information regarding blood transfusions beyond our cats and dogs is limited in veterinary medicine. Transfusion medicine in our domestic animals is complicated, since each species is unique. For example, domestic ferrets have no blood groups, and do not have naturally occurring antibodies against other ferret red blood cell antigens.1 We do know that in other species, whenever a patient receives a transfusion — even from the same species, and even if it has been appropriately crossmatched — a reaction can occur. This is due to the possibility of having alloantibodies, which by definition, are antibodies produced in response to an alloantigen (a foreign antigen) from a genetically different individual of the same species.
In transfusion medicine, it is always preferable to give an allogenic (same-species) transfusion. In general, blood products are difficult to obtain even when you have a blood banking resource. In exotic species, there are no national blood banking resources due to low demand and due to limited blood preservation.1 Therefore, if a patient’s family does not have two pet rabbits in their home (so one can act as donor to the other), you may not be able to treat a clinically symptomatic, anemic rabbit. Emergency situations with our rabbit patients do occur commonly at our facility, and oftentimes, a rabbit could benefit from a transfusion to increase their oxygen-carrying capacity.
However, little is published in the veterinary literature with regards to rabbits and the administration of packed red blood cells from various other animals. More recently, veterinarians have been reaching for xenotransfusions even though their safety and efficacy are not completely known.
Lichtenberger’s review article on transfusion medicine in exotic pets describes the general process of obtaining blood and how to administer a transfusion. 2 Litchtenberger describes the use of Oxyglobin (a hemoglobin-based oxygen-carrying fluid), but this blood substitute has not been commercially available since 2009. There are two more recent papers in the exotic veterinary literature that have given some specific insights into xenotransfusions. Tan et al. concluded that when there is not an appropriate same-species donor available, a ferret could receive crossmatched canine packed red blood cells.1 This was an in vitro investigation that concluded that canine crossmatched packed red blood cells should be used rather than feline packed red blood cells.
Another in vitro study by Dannemiler et al. suggested that crossmatched feline packed red blood cells would be preferable to crossmatched canine packed red blood cells when given to rabbits, if no rabbit blood donor was available.3 The in vivo-serological compatability — therefore the risk of transfusion reactions and length of survival of canine or feline RBCs in rabbits — is not known.3
For now, xenotransfusion should be only considered in an emergency medical/surgical situation, and should be limited to a one-time-only administration. We are currently collecting the data for a multi-institutional, retrospective study on feline packed red blood cell transfusions in rabbit patients at Angell Animal Medical Center and the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. The goal of this study is to gather more clinical information: What are the typical reasons rabbit patients are receiving xenotransfusions; what are the amounts of blood that are administered; what transfusion reactions are there, if seen; and what are the outcomes. The hope is that we can share our experiences regarding xenotransfusions in rabbits with other veterinarians.
