Research Project
Full description The electronic records of the University of Queensland Small Animal Hospital (UQ-SAH), a tertiary veterinary teaching hospital, were queried for the species 'dog' and 'cat'. This Small Animal Hospital is located near Gatton, in the Lockyer Valley of Queensland, a geographical region well known to be populated by eastern brown snakes (Pseudonaja textilis). Eastern brown snake envenomation accounts for vast majority of snake envenomation cases presenting to this hospital, and is the diagnosis given to most dogs and cats that present with a combination of coagulopathy and lower motor neuron signs. Cases were included if they met the following inclusion criteria for EBSE: 1) a witnessed snake envenomation with positive snake identification and evidence of lower motor neuron signs and/or a coagulopathy, 2) a positive urine or blood snake venom detection kit (SVDK) for brown snake, 3) laboratory evidence of a coagulopathy as demonstrated by a prolonged prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) and lower motor neuron signs in a dog or cat in a known brown snake locality. Data was collated in Microsoft® Excel (version 16.61.1 for macOS, Microsoft Corporation, 2022: www.office.microsoft.com/excel) for analysis of descriptive statistics. Analyses were performed using GraphPad Prism (version 9.0.0 for Mac OS, GraphPad Software, San Diego, California USA, www.graphpad.com). For statistical analysis of outcome variables, analyses were performed using SAS 9.4 (Cary, NC). A significance threshold of 0.05 was used.