The Basic Procedure
This is what we do for all of our patients, every time. It is our minimum standard of care.
Every surgical patient at Sunnyside Veterinary Clinic gets the following:
To start off with, every surgery patient and their owner gets to meet personally with the Doctor before surgery. The Doctor examines the patient, and then discusses with the owner the risks, the pain control options, the anesthesia safety options, and the surgical technique options. The Doctor can answer any questions you might have. Some clinics will just have you drop your pet off with the receptionist...
Every surgery patient is very closely monitored
During anesthesia, We monitor breathing rate, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, carbon dioxide levels, and blood pressure. Click here to see what our anesthesia monitoring charts look like. Click here for a more detailed discussion of anesthetic monitoring.
Every patient gets some form of pain medication
Every surgical patient goes home with at least some form of pain medication. While this is good, you need to be aware that there are much better ways to manage post-op pain than just taking pain medication after it’s all over. We’re talking multi-modal, pre-emptive pain management techniques. Click here to go to a more complete discussion.
As good as the Basic Procedure may sound, there are some drawbacks to doing just the basics.
The first problem is pain control.
While the take-home pain medication is a definite improvement over nothing, it still leaves a lot to be desired. There are lots more effective ways to control post-op pain than just taking ibuprofen after the surgery’s all over. We can do better than that. We’re talking multi-modal, pre-emptive pain management techniques. This involves using multiple medications beginning well before the surgery itself, and continuing throughout the post-op period.
Click on the link to go to a discussion of Pre-emptive Pain Management techniques.
The second problem is anesthesia safety.
It is a good thing that we monitor our patients so closely. This allows us to identify problems as they develop. However, it is even better to be able to prevent problems from happening in the first place, and to be able to do something about them quickly if they happen anyway. An IV line allows us to give fluids to help keep low blood pressure problems from ever happening, and to bring blood pressure back up quickly if we need to. And then there's the emergency safety issues...
Click the link for a more in-depth discussion of anesthesia safety.
The third problem is that some patients will have issues that we cannot pick up during our physical exam.
In human medicine, they have found that for young, healthy patients a good pre-op history can be more important than a lab work-up. Dogs and cats are different in that they can't speak for themselves, and they do their best to try and hide their problems. For this reason, labwork can be very helpful in evaluating their readiness for anesthesia.
Click the link for a more detailed discussion of pre-anesthetic lab work.
And now for some good news!
Click this link to print out a coupon for a free up-grade to Laser Surgery. We are offering this upgrade to our clients free of charge. All you have to do is choose at least two other upgrades, for example Pre-emptive Pain Management, and IV Fluid Support, and you can get the up-grade to laser surgery free. Click here to read more about the benefits of Laser Surgery.