The morning your pet is admitted into our practice-they receive a Wellness Examination & Health Assessment, and this is in concert with the pre-surgical blood work, allows all our team to know & develop your pet’s personal anesthetic protocol. At all times your pet will be handled as if it was one of our ‘own’, in keeping with our fear-free practices and policies.
This protocol incorporates a current and expected pain assessment for your dog or cat, anticipating of any potential expected medical concerns, & overall risk assessment is made in keeping with AAHA/AAFP Pain Management guidelines for dogs & cats. This simple process affords your pet care team the opportunity to anticipate many potential anesthetic or surgical/dentistry complications specific to your pet’s breed, species, temperament, & age. This assessment is then reviewed with the Registered Veterinary Technicians & our Veterinarians caring for your pet
Your pet is then placed on intravenous fluids for a minimal period of time in order to ensure your pet’s full hydration. This is only one step of the many used in our anesthetic protocols that improves your pet’s ability to metabolize all or any medications. We also administer pain control medication at this time and, will proceed to the administration of a pre-anesthetic sedative in order to smooth the overall anesthetic “induction”.
Anesthetic induction involves many steps in relatively short order: your pet is placed on a warm/gently heated table, along with the administration of pre-anesthetic oxygen (well known to reduce stress & anxiety) for 5-8 min., the use of an anesthetic medication injection that allows your pet to relax, in the placement an endotracheal tube and continue to manage your pets oxygenation, while the IV fluids have allowed us to manage your pets circulation.
All these steps combine to reduce overall anesthesia risk by allowing your pet’s metabolism to fully utilize the benefits of these medications!
Your pet is then moved to either the dental or surgical suites, placed on a warm surface in order to maintain their body metabolism in concert with both the IV fluids and, anesthetic/oxygen mixture and, appropriate anesthesia and metabolic monitoring is started. Include blood pressure measurements, ECG & temperature monitoring, and respiratory activity assessments combined with active record keeping & reassessment every 5 min. or more frequently as needed. Doing this ensures your pet’s entire anesthetic procedure runs smoothly and seamlessly.
Once your pet’s surgical or dental procedure has been completed, your pet will be moved to a warm and secure area for monitoring until fully recovered. Sunnyview Animal Care has recovery cubicles specifically designed for this purpose and, allows for all team members to visually reassess your pet from many areas of the treatment area. Often we have volunteers or our own staff will sit with the pet until they are reasonably relaxed from their recovery-as part of our fear-free pet experience.
These small steps all work together to allow your pet to recover from our anesthetic protocol as if they were never anesthetized in the first place! Sunnyview Animal Care’s veterinary team take significant pleasure in seeing all our pets leave the hospital as happy as they were when they arrived!