No adverse effects were recorded after IV vitamin K administration in fifty-eight dogs and cats with anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning at one teaching hospital. All patients had normal coagulation times within twenty-four hours, including the twenty-nine who received vitamin K alone with no plasma.
What the study found
Fifty-eight patients, forty-seven dogs, eleven cats, diagnosed with anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning received IV vitamin K1 in a lecithin-solubilizing formulation at five mg/kg. No adverse effects were recorded. Twenty-nine of fifty-eight patients received exogenous coagulation factors; no patient received fresh frozen plasma. All patients had coagulation times within reference intervals by twenty-four hours following admission. Survival to discharge was associated with ninety-six percent of dogs in the vitamin-K-only group, eighty-five percent of dogs in the vitamin-K-plus-coagulation-factors group, and one hundred percent of cats in both groups. The difference in survival between groups for dogs was not statistically significant (p = 0.22).
How the study was built
Retrospective chart review of dogs and cats presented to a single university teaching hospital between January 2010 and January 2022. The authors identified cases by diagnosis code and reviewed medical records for vitamin K administration route, dose, coagulation parameters, adverse events, and outcome. This is observational evidence from one institution's protocol, it shows what was associated with this hospital's use of IV vitamin K in this population, not what would happen if you changed your protocol tomorrow. The study does not compare IV to subcutaneous or oral routes head-to-head.
The number, and its error bars
No adverse effects were recorded after IV administration. The study does not report a confidence interval around that zero, and with a sample this size the true adverse-event rate could be higher than zero even though none were observed. The difference in survival between vitamin-K-only and vitamin-K-plus-coagulation-factors groups was not statistically significant for dogs (p = 0.22).
What the authors say it cannot tell you
The abstract does not state limitations. A retrospective study from one hospital over twelve years carries selection bias (which cases got IV versus other routes?), protocol drift (did the decision to add coagulation factors change over time?), and survivorship bias (cases that arrested before admission are not in the chart). The study does not compare IV vitamin K to subcutaneous or oral administration, so it cannot tell you whether IV is safer or more effective than the alternatives.
Who paid for it
The abstract does not state funding source or conflicts of interest.
What this means for your practice
VeterinaryPracticeNow's read, not the study's. Everything in this section is our editorial interpretation for practice owners. The study does not claim any of it.
The Saturday-night rodenticide call usually runs: do we give IV vitamin K and risk an anaphylactoid reaction, or do we go subcutaneous and oral and accept the slower onset? This chart says one teaching hospital gave IV to cases over twelve years and saw no reactions. That is not proof of zero risk, the study does not give us the confidence interval, and a zero-event rate in this case series does not rule out a low but real rate, but it moves our risk estimate down from where most of us learned it.
The second finding that matters: all patients normal by twenty-four hours, including those who got vitamin K alone with no plasma. If your weekend protocol reflexively adds fresh frozen plasma to every coagulopathic rodenticide case, this is the chart that asks whether you need to. The study does not prove you can skip it, it is retrospective, one hospital, no control arm, but it shows that normalization was associated with cases that did not receive it. That is a different cost conversation with the client and a different inventory conversation with your distributor.
If your weekend on-call runs on calls like this one, subscribe to VeterinaryPracticeNow.
The piece does not tell you what to do. It tells you the evidence base for the IV route just got a data point, and the reflex to add plasma just got a data point against it. What you do with that is yours.