Polycythemia vera, a rare disease/policitemia vera, una enfermedad rara

A 4 y.o crossed labrador presented after being vomiting and passing soft faeces since the day before. He is not himself, and nothing remarkable is found on his clinical examination. Initially, the case is treated as a gastric problem. However, 2h later he collapsed, and is hospitalized, giving fluids, and starts with mild seizures shortly afterwards. Now his mucose membranes are congestive, and on a blood test his hematocrit is extremely high. Even after 6h on fluids, his hematocrit stays very high. Why is this dog producing more much more blood than he needed? (read more)

Despite antiepileptic treatment, his fitting was only controlled after he was drained nearly one litre of blood, and this only decreased his hematocrit from 70% (after aggressive fluid therapy) to 60%. 

Before confirming a polycythemia vera case, we need to rule out any renal or bone marrow disorder. Neither blood analysis is suggesting an organ failure, and a EPO test is requested to an external laboratory. A bone marrow biopsy is also considered. 

Throughout the night he did not have any more seizures, and was heard sneezing several times. However, some physical symptoms like abnormal eye movement (nistagmus), dilated pupils, poor stimuli response, drooling, wobbling, suggest that a permanent brain damage is of concern. Once his owner is updated, he was referred to a specialist with a guarded prognosis.

Part of the blood drawn

Fortunately, polycythemia vera was confirmed, all this symptoms disappeared with time and treatment, and he is again the lively, active dog he used to be. Although he needs eventual check ups, and blood draining on top of his treatment, prognosis is very good when this disease is early diagnosed.