Cats and dogs, just like people, require screening, venous access in case of an emergency, blood pressure maintenance and careful monitoring in an aseptic surgical suite throughout a surgical procedure. Pain control, post cooperatively is also essential.
At Urban Animal, we do everything to make sure your animal companion is safe throughout a procedure. Pre-anesthetic labwork is performed to ensure you companion doesn’t have an underlying illness (including diabetes, impaired liver or kidney function, etc.), which would require different medications and/or certain precautions during the procedure.
All patients have an intravenous catheter so we can quickly correct any issues that may arise during the procedure. For any surgery that lasts over 30 minutes, patients are on intravenous fluids to help maintain blood pressure and ensure optimal blood flow to the kidneys.
We measure and chart a range of important parameters such as:
-blood pressure
-temperature
-heart rate
-respiratory rate
-carbon dioxide
-SPO2 (a measurement of red cells are saturated with oxygen
-and more…
Patients are given appropriate pre-medication to help control pain before it occurs, helping to ensure your cat or dog isn’t hyper-sensitized to painful stimuli after the procedure.
Induction medications are similar to what is used for human procedures, drugs like Propofol are often used and for patients with severe cardiac disease we can induce with a drug such as Etomidate.
Pain control is used as needed during the procedure, and upon recovery another medication is often added to the mix – ensuring that we’re addressing pain from different receptor sites, allowing us to better manage pain post-operativly with lower doses of different medications rather than use just one drug at a very high dose with greater side effects.
If this seems like a lot, it’s because it is. It takes a lot to make anesthesia and surgery safe, but we wouldn’t do it any other way. Your pet doesn’t deserve anything less.
Heights Animal Hospital
So, if you’re thinking about a surgical or anesthetic procedure, don’t settle. Call Urban Animal and let us talk with you about how we can help.
