Pre-Anaesthetic Blood Tests
At Total Care Vets we recommend all pets undergoing anaesthesia have a blood test done prior. This test can be completed in 10 minutes in house, and just requires a small amount of blood. Pre-anaesthetic blood tests can indicate if there are any issues with your pet's liver or kidneys.
Why is this important? The Liver and Kidneys are the main organs which metabolise drugs, so knowing if there are any abnormalities allows the vet to alter drug dosages if need be, to ensure your pet has the safest anaesthesia possible, or in severe cases, may let us know that the risk of the anaesthesia to the pet is too great, and we may advise you not to proceed.
In short, it allows us to make an informed decision based on your individual pet's needs.
Fluids while under Anaesthesia
We recommend that all pets undergoing a general anaesthesia be on IV (intravenous) fluids. Anaesthetic drugs, blood loss during surgery, and other factors can cause your pet's blood pressure to drop. This can put vital organs such as the liver and kidneys at risk of damage. IV fluids help to maintain blood pressure and perfusion of organs during surgery.
Administration of IV fluids during surgery has also been shown to improve wound healing and is linked to better surgical outcomes.
For some patients (old or unwell pets, or pets undergoing a prolonged procedure) we will insist on IV fluids for the wellbeing of the pet. For elective procedures such as desexing we recommend and encourage IV fluids, but leave the final decision up to you, the owner.
Take home pain relief
All of our surgical patients are given pain relief in their premed prior to surgery, and have an injection that lasts a further 24 hours after they have recovered from their anaesthesia. Current recommendations are that pets undergoing desexing procedures have up to 3 days of pain relief. In order to keep our prices a bit lower, and encourage desexing of pets, we offer the additional pain relief as optional on desexings. For other procedures, take home pain relief is dispensed at the discretion of the vet.