Anticoagulant Poisoning
An anticoagulant is any type of chemical that prevents the blood in animals or humans from clotting. If an animal ingests too much anticoagulant, a small jostle or trauma could cause the animal to bleed to death if it is not treated properly. The most common cause of anticoagulant poisoning is rat poison. Humans also use prescription anticoagulants and an overdose of the medicine would have the same effect as the rat poison.
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Rat Poison
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If you intend to use a poison to kill rats, the Marvista Vet website recommends using an anticoagulant, because it is slow acting and it has an antidote, unlike other types of rat poison. According to the Pet MD website, there are two main types of anticoagulant rat poison: cumulative and single dose. The cumulative poisons have warfarin and hydroxycoumadin as the main poisons and take more than one dose over several days to kill rats. Single-dose poisons contain chemicals from the indanedione class and kill up to 200 times faster than the cumlative poisons.
How It Works
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Vitamin K is a vital element in blood clotting. Certain enzymes in the blood must be activated by the Vitamin K to begin clotting the blood and repairing a damaged blood vessel. An anticoagulant prevents the body from recycling Vitamin K. Once the Vitamin K stored in the body is gone, the blood can no longer clot.
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Symptoms
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The animal won't show any signs of poisoning until it begins to bleed. When this begins, the animal may become weak or unstable, feel cold, have nosebleeds, vomit blood, have bloody stools, bleed from its rectum, have visible bruises, have bleeding gums, have a swollen belly from an accumulation of blood or have difficulty breathing because of bleeding of the lungs.
Diagnosis
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A veterinarian will look for the symptoms as well as do blood and urine tests. The blood will be tested to see how long it takes to clot. A diagnosis will be much easier if you can bring along a sample of a suspected poison.
Treatment
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The antidote for anticoagulant poisoning is Vitamin K. This will initially be given as shots under the skin, but it may eventually be switched to tablets that the animal can take orally. If the animal has lost a lot of blood, it will be given a blood transfusion to stabilize it. Once the Vitamin K treatments are stopped, Marvista Vet recommends having the animal's blood checked 48 hours after the last Vitamin K treatment to make sure all the poison is gone and to prevent a reoccurrence of the bleeding.
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