Is my cat's pre-neutering blood test normal and safe for surgery?

Hello, thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. I can assure you, if there was any question that the blood tests were not good your vet would not have proceeded with the surgery. The RDW is the distribution of the red blood cells. Remember, not every individual will fall exactly within the reference range. Those are averages and there will always be outliers. A higher RDW is not uncommon in young animals. The reference range most vets use has the high end of normal as 31% so I wouldn't be worried at all about 30.7%. The things we really look at for pre-anesthesia are kidney and liver values as those two organs are used by the body to remove anesthetics. If those have any abnormalities we would not want to anesthetize him. It sounds like Littlefoot's was normal. I don't think you have anything to be concerned about. Hope this helps. Best wishes.

Hello, the low number of platelets is very common in automatic blood test done by a machine, machines tend to undercount the number of platelets and it is considered to be not accurate, for this reason the vet will usually do a blood smear and count the platelets manually. i would definitely not be worried about that.

Thank you for sending over the copies of Gonzie's blood work! Looking at the provided results, I see that his creatinine is a tiny bit elevated. This value increases with kidney damage or dehydration. I'd certainly recommend talking to his vet about rechecking his kidney function in a month or two, as well as running a urinalysis to see how well his kidneys are working to concentration his urine. The monocyte increase is extremely mild. I don't worry when this type of white blood cell increases a tiny bit while other white blood cell lines (especially the neutrophils and lymphocytes) are normal. Stress alone can trigger this minor elevation. The RDW helps to give the proportions of the red blood cells' size and volume. Again, this minor elevation does not seem to be significant. A 50% hematocrit is slightly elevated, which means that Gonzie has some extra red blood cells. I would much rather see too many red blood cells than too few! His blood volume could also be more concentrated if he's a bit dehydrated. Platelets can be challenging to read on CBCs since they can clump together, so the machine may read a clump of several platelets as just one single cell. In these cases, it's always useful to manually examine a blood smear under the microscope to determine if adequate numbers of platelets are present. Nothing on the provided lab work makes me terribly concerned at this moment, but I do think it's worth tracking his kidney values and confirming an accurate platelet count. I hope that everything goes well for Gonzie!

Some patients need to be stabilized before anesthesia, which may mean correcting blood work abnormalities (electrolytes, etc.), correcting blood pressure issues, giving IV fluids or possibly giving a blood transfusion prior to surgery, especially if there is significant blood loss expected.

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! He could potentially undergo anesthesia. It is just a matter of being careful with the amount of time that he is under anesthesia and keeping it to a minimum and to watch that his blood pressure does not drop in the process. A castration is so quick that I would not be too concerned about this. I would recommend IV fluids all throughout the procedure. Best of luck!

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Baxter. Depending on his anemia, this is likely a significant factor to consider when discussing surgery. If for example, he is suffering blood loss from a mass in his belly. Removing the mass and stopping the bleeding would be life saving. If however, his body is attacking and destroying his red blood cells, surgery may not be recommended. I hope this information helps!

I’m glad to hear that Neeko’s kidneys have fared well despite what sounds like quite a scary situation! Her platelet count (PLT) looks perfect. The PDW and PCT counts give us information about her platelets’ sizes and distribution. Since Neeko’s platelet count is adequate, it’s possible that her body has been working hard to make new platelets, which are larger than older, mature platelets. Larger cells result in higher PCT numbers, which can make the PDW number a bit lower (more large new cells than smaller older cells). I wouldn’t think twice about these numbers given her recent illness, particularly considering that everything else has improved so much. I hope that everything continues to go well for Neeko!