I Am Afraid of Anesthesia for My Pet Part IV Sandra L. Waugh VMD, MS - Windsor Pet Dental
O
k, Annabelle, you find this talk about anesthesia a bit, well, sleep inducing. After all, Dr Sandy (your mom) puts you under anesthesia yearly in order to keep your teeth clean and healthy and you have always been just fine. So what’s the big deal? Well, anesthesia IS a big deal. To make anesthesia as safe as possible requires an investment in equipment, both the anesthesia machine itself and all the various monitoring equipment. It also requires an investment in the necessary medications involved. But most of all it requires an investment in the training of the anesthetists, the people who are in charge of anesthesia, from the first dose of the pre-anesthetic medication all the way to removing the intravenous catheter just before the pet goes home and everything in between. The anesthetists job is to use the information from the monitors to make constant decisions about the state of the patient and what actions need to taken, if any. A good anesthetist does not react to a problem after it arises during a procedure but anticipates potential problems and proactively takes steps to head off any problems. The anesthetist must know how to interpret the readings from the monitors, must know what to do if the readings are not normal and have the medications and equipment at hand in order to intervene.
A busy moment during the day. Two patients under anesthesia having teeth extracted (yellow arrows), two veterinarians performing the dentistry (red arrows) and two people whose sole job is to run the anesthesia (green arrows). 34 4 Legs & a Tail
Fall 2021
