Anesthesia Service
Most of us are anxious about going under anesthesia ourselves, so it’s understandable to be anxious about your pet being anesthetized. Anesthesia for animals has come a long way and is safer than it ever was before, and a well-trained veterinary team further reduces your pet’s risk.
Here at Carefree Dentistry and Oral Surgery for Animals we strive to provide the very safest and stress-free anesthesia experience possible for you and your pets. Our individualized approach to anesthesia and pain control helps achieve our goal of a safe anesthetic experience and speedy recovery.
Our approach can be summarized in 3 commonsense steps:
Go Light
We need our patients unconscious and unaware of what’s happening, but they don’t need excessively deep anesthesia for most oral treatments. As a general rule, most dental patients only require a light plane of anesthesia.
Go Easy
Short-acting medications are selected, and given at the lightest dose possible to
achieve safe anesthesia. Local anesthetics to numb tissues are administered to preemptively control pain, which allows lighter general anesthesia levels and also decreases the need for other pharmaceuticals.
Monitor
Every patient is assigned their own dedicated nurse anesthetist, who constantly monitors parameters like blood pressure, heart rate, EKG patterns, oxygenation, carbon dioxide levels, respiration rate, and temperature. This allows us to regularly adjust anesthesia levels and medications to your pet’s needs.
What If An Anesthesiologist Is Needed?
Carefree Dentistry and Oral Surgery for Animals is pleased to also offer access to board-certifiedTM veterinary anesthesiologists to help make your pet’s anesthetic event as safe as possible. Available services range from anesthetic protocol recommendations to remote patient monitoring to direct physical attendance by an anesthesiologist.
Anesthesia Consult
Includes a thorough review of your pet’s medical history, physical exam findings, and diagnostic test results. Based on this information, the anesthesiologist makes anesthesia protocol recommendations specifically for your pet. The anesthesiologist is also available to the Carefree Dentistry and Oral Surgery for Animals team via phone for support throughout the anesthetic period. This level of anesthesia is appropriate for most patients.
Remote Monitoring
Some patients require more involved participation with an anesthesiologist. The off-site anesthesiologist is able to view the patient monitor and continually assess to the status of your pet during anesthesia (i.e. blood pressure, EKG, ventilation, respiratory rate, pulse, oxygenation, and temperature). Using this real time information, the anesthesiologist continues to make patient management recommendations to the attending nurse anesthetist as indicated throughout your pet’s procedure.
In Attendance
For patients with especially challenging medical conditions, e.g. heart conditions, metabolic disease, very advanced age, etc., having an anesthesiologist on-site directly attending and running the anesthesia may be elected.
Once the procedure is completed, your pet continues to be closely monitored during their recovery period by our attentive staff. Our goal is to have your pet fully conscious, pain-free, and walking out of the hospital within just a few hours of their anesthetic procedure with a happily wagging tail.