Park Hill Vet: The ABCs Of Sedation
When And Why Your Pets Needs Anesthesia
By Margot K. Vahrenwald, DVM, CVJ
For the GPHN
Apprehension at the thought of your pet being anesthetized or sedated is perfectly normal. Many pet owners are so fearful about anesthesia and sedation that they delay or avoid important treatments for their beloved family members. Delays mean disease continues to progress and a much more difficult decision might have to be made.
No one should ever tell someone not to be worried, but a few things might help ease your mind about anesthesia and sedation:
• Fewer than 1 in 100,000 animals have any issues or problems under anesthesia or sedation, which is about the same as it is for humans. Most difficulties occur in human and animal patients with concurrent problems or co-morbidities that increase risk, such as advanced heart disease. And, known risks can be managed with careful drug choices and monitoring.
• The scary drugs that used to cause problems for our patients, such as thiopental, are no longer used. The drugs used are the same that you receive from your human anesthesiologist when undergoing brief procedures or minor surgery.
• The anesthetic medications available to veterinarians currently are leaps and bounds better than when I started in this field 30-plus years ago. All our products are either short-acting, such as gas anesthetic – meaning they are metabolizing out of the patient as soon as administration is discontinued – or reversible, such as injectable sedation with a reversal agent that is given as soon as sedation is no longer needed.
Why do we anesthetize or sedate our animal patients? Several reasons:
• It’s obvious for invasive surgery that anesthesia is needed to prevent pain and movement.
• For dental procedures. No pet will willingly sit with a digital dental x-ray plate in their mouth, particularly when it can be uncomfortable when positioning to get images of some of the teeth. Nor can teeth be safely extracted on an awake patient.
• We also clean subgingivally (or just under the gumline) — for which humans are sedated too because the degree of discomfort.
• For x-rays, we can and do take x-rays on awake animals. But for fearful or painful animals, especially for orthopedic images of limbs, sedation offers not only pain relief but allows positioning for truly diagnostic images in one shot rather than having to take multiples. That lessens x-ray exposure for both people and pets.
Your veterinarian and their supporting team members should always be willing to answer all questions about anesthetic procedures. If the timing is right, they might even give you a tour of the hospital and you can see their people, procedures and processes in action.
Dr. Margot Vahrenwald is the owner of Park Hill Veterinary Medical Center at 2255 Oneida St. For more information, visit www.parkhillvet.com.