pet connection

It’s almost guaranteed: if I write about almost any pet health topic, from how to pick a good veterinarian to a story about a recalled drug, comments and email about anesthesia for pets come pouring in — along with a truckload of urban legends, dire warnings about specific drugs, second-hand horror stories and egregious mis-statements of scientific fact.

Yes, anesthesia can be risky for pets, just as it is for us. And yes, pets tend to be anesthetized more often than humans in their lifetimes. And yes, also, not all veterinary practices are equal when it comes to how well then handle anesthesia for pets.

But anesthesia techniques have improved a great deal over the last decade. So have the drugs. What you have to do as a pet owner is understand the general principles behind best anesthesia practices and find a veterinary team that uses them.

So this week, I’ve interviewed three experts and put together a roadmap to getting it right.

“Our days of performing surgery on animals with substandard anesthesia are long gone, just as our days of performing open heart surgery on babies without anesthesia belong in the dark ages,” said Dr. Julie Meadows of the UC-Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital.

Also left behind is just hoping for the best, said Dr. Kris Kruse-Elliott, medical director at AnimalScan in Redwood City and a board-certified veterinary anesthesiologist.

“We’re much better equipped to minimize anesthesia risk than in the past,” she told me. “Veterinarians in James Herriot’s day didn’t have a lot of tools to monitor anesthesia, but today, we have everything that’s available in human medicine.”

Those tools include sophisticated equipment that can monitor heart and lung function in ways that were unheard of even two decades ago; better anesthesia drugs; more knowledge about how to intervene if problems with respiration and circulation arise; and better pre-anesthetic screening procedures to identify patients that need special care when being anesthetized, such as dogs or cats with kidney, heart or liver problems.

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For planned procedures, the veterinarian will want to see your pet a day or two before for a complete physical examination, including blood tests.

When the veterinarian listens to the pet’s heart, the rhythm should be normal, and there should be no unusual sounds such as a murmur. “If the heart evaluation is normal, a veterinarian should recommend blood and urine testing, to evaluate the function of the liver and kidneys, the two organs that break down the anesthetic agents commonly used,” said Meadows.

If the pet has heart, kidney or liver problems and the need for anesthesia is critical, special precautions can be taken to make the process safer. Knowing in advance allows the veterinary team to take those precautions.

When it comes to the procedure itself, pet owners often focus primarily on what drugs will be used, but Kruse-Elliot thinks that approach is misguided.

“The questions people should be asking of their veterinarians aren’t so much what exact drugs will be used, but what is the procedure they follow?” she said. “As a specialist, I have many drugs available, while a veterinarian in general practice will have fewer. But what you want to hear is that they’ll be able to modify what they’re doing with the drugs they’re comfortable with, according to the needs of each individual patient.”

Nancy Campbell, a registered veterinary technician with special training in anesthesiology, agrees. “Almost any appropriate drug combination can be safe if the medical team knows what they’re doing,” she said. “And almost any can be dangerous if they don’t.”

The rest is here… hope you find it helpful!

Photo courtesy of the American College of Veterinary Anesthesiologists.

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