2015 ACVIM Forum Research Abstract Program

The EPOC analyzer was easy to use, reliable, and portable. Although the CCC showed unsatisfactory agreement for most analytes, the majority had acceptable clinical variance on Bland-Altman plots. In conclusion, the EPOC analyzer is suitable for use in small animal patients for all analytes (except sodium and hematocrit). Further studies are warranted evaluating the EPOC in non-healthy animals. The osmotic fragility (OF) of erythrocytes determines their fragility in hypotonic solutions. The goals of this study were to determine the mean OF (MOF) in cats with anemia and to evaluate the suitability of this test for diagnosing anemic patients. The study included 108 anemic cats with various forms of anemia. Anemia was categorized into the following groups: acute/chronic blood loss anemia (BA), hemolytic anemia (HA), anemia of inflammatory and neoplastic diseases (AID), intramedullary (INR) or extramedullary nonregenerative anemia (ENR). OF was performed by mixing red blood cells in a serial dilution of NaCl solution (0 -0.85%). MOF was determined from the lysis curve as concentration of NaCl at which 50% of the erythrocytes were hemolysed. The test was assessed by three different people. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS (IBS, Version 22). The 115 cats used as controls exhibited an MOF between 0.39 -0.62% (mean 0.51). There was a significant difference in measurements of MOF among the three examiners (Kruskal-Wallis-Test, pvalue <0.001). Therefore the 95%-percentile was used as reference value (0.44 -0.58%), i.e. MOF above 0.58% was regarded as increased, below 0.44% as decreased. Cats with HA (n = 38) exhibited the highest MOF (0.44 -0.85%, median 0.72); two cats with chronic BA had the lowest MOF values (0.38 -0.40%). Overall, each of the groups exhibited the following rates of increased MOF: HA 86%, INR 67%, ENR 62%, AID 46%, and acute BA 28% (n = 38, 9, 13, 28, and 18, respectively). MOF may be a useful tool in diagnosing HA and BA and helpful to differentiate nonregenerative immune-mediated hemolytic anemia from other forms of nonregenerative anemia. Low MOF values can be an indicator of a chronic BA.