Since 1974

Chesterfield Veterinary Center

Surgery

There are many reasons a pet might need surgery.  From a routine neuter to a torn ligament to bladder stones, we often need to help mother nature along by opening the body and fixing things.

There are always risks when a pet undergoes anesthesia for surgery.  A large part of our job is to minimize those risks.

For that reason, we:

· Run pre-anesthetic bloodwork before every procedure

· Use anesthetic premedication wherever possible

 

Our multiparameter patient monitor helps us provide high-quality anesthetic monitoring during surgery.

In this photo, Dr. Mary is performing a minor, nonsterile procedure.

· Monitor every patient’s heart rate & rhythm, blood oxygenation, respirations, blood pressure, and temperature throughout the anesthetic episode

· Use only high-quality gas anesthetic agents (sevoflurane and isoflurane)

· Monitor recovering patients in our main treatment area, where they are easily visible and well cared for

Another large part of our surgical service is pain control.  Pets feel pain just as humans do, but they can’t tell us about it.  So, we do our absolute best to keep them comfortable by using a multimodal approach.  While not all methods are appropriate to every procedure, we generally use a combination of:

· Opioids (morphine-like drugs),

· Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (aspirin-like drugs), and

· Local anesthetics (similar to Novocain^®)

We also often make use of continuous infusions of these drugs so that patients get constant pain relief that can be adjusted minute-to-minute in order to ensure proper dosing.

For more information on our advanced pain control protocols, please click here.