Rabbits as critical patients (including rodents)

Most important questions

• What is a critical ill rabbit?
• What will a critical ill rabbit look like?
• What do I do first ?
• How to avoid causing more harm to the animal?
• What will I do after I stabilize the animal?

What is a critical ill rabbit?

Basically a critical ill rabbit is present if there was no food or water uptake or no elimination for 24 hours! 
A spinal fracture is not really critical

• Trying to avoid it, is success.
• Client education is important

What will a critical ill rabbit look like?

• It often goes unrecognized due to the settle character of the clinical signs.
• As a prey species it is not in the animal’s interest to attract attention.
• The ‘conservation-withdrawal’reaction overweights the “fight or flight’reaction.

What is happening

• The normal stress response is happening!
• Weekers et al. Neuroendocrine Stress Response in Critically Ill Rabbits Endocrinology, March 2002, 143(3):764–774

Some results and implications

• Arterial pO2 and pCO2, and levels of ionized calcium, sodium and potassium were not significantly different be- tween the two study groups at any of the studied time points  
• Blood gases might not be that helpful as in other species!
• Hemoglobin levels: on d 1, Hb level decreased to the same extent in critically ill and control animals and this remained stable until d 3. On d 8, Hb was significantly lower in critically ill animals than in controls.
• Hematology changes: in rabbits one of the main effects in disease is the reduction of the total blood cellularity, particularly with respect to the red cell values but also to a lesser extent with the white cell counts.
  - Increase rarely
  - The hematocrit might be one of the best indicator to differentiate between sick and health

Conclusion

• The analysis showed that the least important variable was the basophil count, followed by the monocyte and eosinophil counts

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