Dog's Surgery Surprise: A Tale of Worms and Blood Clotting

Meet Luna, a female dog who had an unusual experience during a routine surgery. Luna had traveled from Eastern Europe and loved to eat poop, which is called coprophagia. She didn't get any medicine to prevent parasites. When she went in for a planned surgery to remove her ovaries and uterus, the doctors found something unexpected. She started bleeding too much, so they had to stop the surgery. They checked her belly with an ultrasound and did some blood tests, but everything looked normal. They also didn't find any signs of a common worm infection called angiostrongylosis or other infections you can get from traveling.

But then, they did a special test to see how well her blood clots. That's when they found out Luna had a problem with her blood clotting, called hyperfibrinolysis. They also found out she had a worm infection called Strongyloides stercoralis. They gave her some medicine called ivermectin, and her blood clotting problem went away. This is the first time this worm infection has been linked to this blood clotting problem in dogs. But other worm infections have been linked to it in dogs and other animals. So, if a dog has this blood clotting problem and all the usual causes have been ruled out, maybe it's because of this worm infection.

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