Veterinary Clinical Pathology exam questions: topics, study tips and free sample questions

Answer: E. Brucella blood agar plates are a primary isolation medium that provide a rich medium for anaerobic organisms. A special incubator is needed if doing in-house anaerobic sample culturing, or placing the collected sample into an anaerobic swab collection system when sending to an outside lab The MacConkey’s agar plate is a primary isolation medium for selection of gram- negative bacteria. Selenite broth enriches samples to help detect Salmonella spp. Triple sugar iron agar slant shows how an organism to utilizes glucose, sucrose, and lactose; and whether it produces hydrogen sulfide. Citrate test media help identify Enterobacteriaceae based on its ability to use citrate as asole carbon source.

Answer: E. The two recommended ways to recover parasites from the GI tract post-mortem are the decanting and sieving methods. Post-mortem diagnosis of parasitism might help determine cause of death or provide info for herd management. For decanting, all the ingesta from one organ (e.g., the cecum) is placed in a bucket and the inside of the organ is lightly scrubbed to remove parasites. Add warm water, let sit for 5 minutes, then decant the supernatant. Look at a small amount of the sediment under the microscope to ID active worms/parasites. For sieving, the decanted sediment is obtained as above, then rinsed over a sieve to remove non-parasitic debris. The other answer choices are methods of fecal flotation.

Answer: C. The history, plus a lab pattern of low platelets, increased bleeding time and normal APTT, PT and TT tests suggests immune-mediated thrombocytopenia. Immune-mediated thrombocytopenia is the most common cause of spontaneous bleeding in dogs. It can be a primary disorder (idiopathic) or secondary to infection, neoplasia or certain drug therapies. Twice as common in females; cockers, poodles and Old English sheepdogs are predilected, but can occur in any breed. Dogs with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) often present with thrombocytopenia but will also typically have a prolonged PT and aPTT. and Blackwell's 5-Min. Vet Consult Canine-Feline, 4* ed. pp.1335-37.