General Anesthesia 

We monitor our patients closely to keep them as safe as possible during procedures that require general anesthesia. In addition to a veterinary technician providing continued monitoring of your pet’s heart and respiratory rate, blood pressure, and other vital signs we also have state of the art monitoring equipment in use for all anesthetic procedures. These monitors are the same as those used in intensive care settings and provide another source of information on how your pet is responding to the anesthetic drugs and the procedure itself. We do all we can to insure that all anesthetic procedures are done as safely as possible.

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Please feel free to ask us about our patient monitoring protocol or any concerns you might have about your pet’s procedure. We’d be happy to discuss these matters in more detail.

For some procedures, your pet will need to be administered general anesthesia so that he or she will be unconscious and not feel pain. Many pet owners worry about their pets being administered general anesthesia. We assure you that modern anesthesia is generally quite safe and to further lower any risk, we perform a pre-anesthetic physical examination and run blood work to try and detect underlying health issues. In addition, we follow a specific anesthetic protocol. We use the safest drug therapy protocols and provide continuous monitoring of vital signs during the procedure.

At the time of the pre-anesthetic exam we administer pain medications to ensure they are fully available before any pain stimulus is initiated. We then administer intravenous drugs to provide complete anesthesia for a short period while we place a breathing tube into the patient’s trachea (windpipe). To maintain the state of unconsciousness, we deliver a gas anesthetic in combination with oxygen through the breathing tube.

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Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns about your pet receiving general anesthesia or about the procedure for which your pet is scheduled.