Many veterinary hospitals have permanent canine and/or feline blood donors to cover their transfusion requirements and some have their own blood bank. Hospitals must ensure there is appropriate donor selection and screening, as there are inherent risks of transmission of infectious agents and of causing adverse reactions. All donors should be fully vaccinated and receive regular veterinary preventative health care. A full physical examination should be performed by a veterinary surgeon prior to each donation, and should be unremarkable. Donors should also be screened for infectious diseases. Blood collection and component preparation can be labour intensive and time consuming. It is of great importance to know the properties of the different blood products available in transfusion medicine, as well as how they might be used to achieve the best results in clinical practice. Veterinary nurses must know how to administer blood and blood products safely to their patients. Blood products are prepared from donor animals and represent a very limited resource, not available in all situations. Through a combination of rigorous donor screening, individualized blood product selection, and careful monitoring, veterinary nurses can minimize the risks and enhance the benefits of transfusion.

Hip dysplasia (HD) is an orthopaedic pathology with high prevalence in dogs, especially in large and giant breeds. It has a polygenic origin and is influenced by several factors such as age, sex, nutrition, metabolism, physical activity and hormones. Animals affected with this disease are born with normal joints but as they develop, joint changes appear. These changes may be expressed by lameness, gait abnormalities, hip instability and pain in full extension of the joint. To reduce the HD prevalence, selective breeding programmes have been implemented in which only animals free of disease or with minimal articular changes can reproduce. As these programmes do not always have the desired success, early radiographs should be performed in susceptible animals, in order to slow the progression of changes. The aim of this review is to summarize canine HD control and prevention aspects, with reference to the factors that predispose to disease, and the various treatment options. The role played by the veterinary nurse in advising the HD dog owners on disease management and also on how to avoid the risk factors in order to reduce the number of affected animals, is also discussed.

The blood transfusion (administration of blood) is a resource of veterinary medicine with several indications. Point-of-care blood-typing methods, including both typing cards and rapid gel agglutination, are readily available. Following blood typing, cross matching is performed on one or more donor units of appropriate blood type. Cross matching reduces the risk of transfusion reactions but does not completely eliminate the risk of other types of transfusion reactions in veterinary patients. All transfusion reactions should be appropriately documented and investigated. It is, therefore, important to have in-depth technical knowledge about concepts and procedures involved in clinical blood transfusion, so that the entire procedure can be performed in the most appropriate way and with a high success rate.