Patient Care

Anesthesia

We take care to ensure the safety of your pet when undergoing anesthesia for surgical or medical procedures. We understand that anesthesia is a source of anxiety for owners.

Before surgery we evaluate potential anesthetic risks by collecting information on your pet’s previous history and any other medical conditions which may be present from you and your veterinarian. If there are any reasons to be concerned about the safety of anesthesia we may recommend that blood samples are collected to assess the complete blood count (CBC) and serum biochemistries. These provide us with information about the animal’s overall health and often specifically about kidney and liver function. A preoperative physical examination may identify other problems. (related to the heart and lungs).

If we have concerns about your pet’s health we may recommend other tests or procedures (for instance X-rays or ultrasound) which can be performed by your regular veterinarian. In some cases after consultation with your veterinarian we may recommend referral to another specialist to work up other problems before we consider anesthesia.

Pets often find hospitalization for surgery stressful. To reduce their anxiety we give tranquilizing drugs to most animals when they arrive in the hospital. This also allows us to safer doses of anesthetic drugs.

We use state of the art anesthetic monitoring equipment. Routinely we monitor temperature, electrocardiogram, pulse, and blood pressure, level of oxygen in the blood (pulse oximetry) and respiration (end tidal carbon dioxide). Most animals receive intravenous fluids during and after the surgical procedure.