February 2020

Bovine Abortion Results: 2019

By Dr. Gregg Hanzlicek

Abortion workups can be very frustrating for diagnosticians, practitioners, and producers. Approximately 19.2% of the bovine submissions submitted to KSVDL in 2019 resulted in a “definitive” diagnosis.

There are several reasons why a definitive diagnosis is not resulted on any submission, including the organism is no longer present, pathogens are not involved, excessive tissue autolysis is present, and not all appropriate tissues were submitted.

Appropriate tissues to submit for an abortion workup include:

Fixed and fresh:	Additional fresh samples:
Brain Heart Lung Spleen Thymus Liver Adrenal glands Skeletal muscle (3 different locations) Placenta (multiple sections)	Ocular fluid Thoracic fluid Abomasal fluid

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