Hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death in combat, and damage control resuscitation (DCR) research has shown that plasma is a superior resuscitation fluid for severely injured, bleeding canine casualties. However, cold chain requirements make managing fresh frozen plasma (FFP) supply logistics difficult in austere environments. Limited supplies of freeze dried plasma (FDP) are currently available to the US military today through an agreement with the French Military for human use. However, there is no capability to provide Military Working Dogs (MWD) with any blood products. To meet the needs of the modern MWD, lighter weight, rugged, compressible, and easy to use FDP is required. This project will include evaluation and adaptation of a rugged, collapsible, and light weight FDP bag created for human FDP, the optimization of FDP techniques used for human FDP to canine plasma and the characterization of the effects of lyophilization on canine plasma from MWD representative breeds, German Shepherd Dogs and Belgian Malinois.
