Effects of blood contamination on equine peritoneal fluid analysis.

The research was conducted to understand the impact of blood contamination on the analysis of peritoneal fluid in healthy adult horses. The findings reveal that at up to 17% blood contamination, the nucleated cell count and protein concentration interpretations were not significantly affected, however, red blood cell count showed notable increase.

Experimental Design and Methodology

• The research was performed using peritoneal fluid and blood collected from 8 healthy adult horses. Four separate 1 ml aliquots of peritoneal fluid from each horse were subjected to different levels of blood contamination: 0ml (control group), 0.05ml, 0.10ml, and 0.20ml.
• These samples were then analysed for several parameters including red blood cell count, nucleated blood cell count, total protein concentration and nucleated cell differential count.

Key Findings

• According to the statistical analysis, the contamination of peritoneal fluid samples with blood up to 0.20 ml did not result in significant changes in the number of nucleated cells or the total protein concentration.
• There was no major alteration noticed in the nucleated blood cell count or the nucleated cell differential count.
• On the other hand, the red blood cell count increased significantly with the amount of blood contamination. This indicates that the RBC count could be a parameter affected by blood contamination.

Conclusions

• The study concluded that blood contamination up to 17% does not significantly affect the interpretation of the nucleated cell count or the protein concentration in a peritoneal fluid analysis of clinically healthy horses.
• However, caution might be needed when interpreting red blood cell counts in potentially contaminated samples, as these showed a notable increase with contamination.