What Blood Can Tell You

Blood testing can provide important information, but it almost always needs to be interpreted relative to the clinical examination findings, history, and additional testing in order to arrive at an accurate diagnosis of the problem.
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What Your Horse
Blood testing can provide important information, but it almost always needs to be interpreted relative to the clinical examination findings, history, and additional testing in order to arrive at an accurate diagnosis of the problem. | Photo: Erica Larson

By Michael A. Ball, DVM and Christina S. Cable, DVM, Dipl. ACVS

Your veterinarian wants to do some blood tests on your horse. It’s a common term to anyone who has been around horses very long, but it is also a very non-specific term. What kind of tests, and what will the results tell him (and you)? Before you can understand what blood tests are and how they can help diagnose ailments in your horse, it’s a good idea to understand some of the basics about the study of blood—hematology.

Blood tests are a part of veterinary medicine known as laboratory medicine. This branch of medicine is used by your veterinarian—along with physical examination findings—to aid, confirm, or disprove a suspected diagnosis. Laboratory medicine includes a wide range of sub-specialties including hematology (the study of red and white blood cells), clinical chemistry (which helps evaluate organ dysfunction), and cytology (the study of cells, often referred to as clinical pathology). For this article, we will only discuss hematology. The tests will not usually give an exact diagnosis, but can at least determine if an organ system (i.e., liver or kidney) is not functioning normally or how the body is responding to an infection

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