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VETERINARY
THE MOBILE VET
Richard Sanderson BVSc certAVP( SAP) GDL MRCVS, Owner of Sanderson Vet and Honorary Lecturer at University of Liverpool talks all things veterinary.
No animal is too old, only ever too ill. That’ s our motto in relation to anaesthesia. Safe anaesthesia is a passion of the practice, as it leads to the best outcomes and recoveries.
We aspire to offer anaesthesia like you would get in the best human hospitals. And as such, on a regular basis we safely anaesthetise elderly or geriatric patients. In recent times we have anaesthetised cats over the age of 20, and performed major surgery on dogs in their late teens!
The vet should know the patient, and their owners, and forge a trusting relationship prior to anaesthesia in order to create a gold-standard patient-focused anaesthesia plan. We discuss this plan before any anaesthesia is performed at our state-of-the-art hub in Heswall.
Each practice offers a different level of anaesthesia, and it is important to understand what your pet will receive. For us, the gold-standard approach is the only safe approach when it comes to anaesthetic safety, and we would urge clients to ask their vets what exactly is included as standard in their anaesthetic before undergoing any procedures.
Anaesthetic monitoring is crucial and it is essential to have access to a multi-parameter monitoring devise to assist the team monitoring the anaesthetic. This allows us to monitor temperature, ECG, blood pressure, oxygen and CO2 levels as well as heart rate and respiratory rates. Our monitor comes from a human hospital, and allows us to provide adequate safe anaesthesia whilst minimising the amount of gas needed.
This reduces anaesthetic risk and speeds recovery and should be used as routine.
We would never anaesthetise an animal without placing an IV line, and providing fluid therapy. This is essential for emergency access, but also helps protect organs from low blood pressure for example. No anaesthetic should be performed without this!
To maintain temperature, active warming devices such as a Bair-Hugger or Hot-Dog should be used as standard. Hypothermia is a known risk factor for organ damage or delayed recovery, and we would never want to unnecessarily risk the patient through coldness.
To ensure good anaesthesia, adequate pain relief is crucial. As standard we use multi-modal pain relief( several drugs) alongside local anaesthetic techniques. This helps to control pain and reduce the amount of anaesthetic required, minimising side-effects and risk.
Without these things, anaesthesia is simply less safe and less effective. Often these things may not be standard but at Sanderson Vet we believe they are the absolute minimum level we offer. Our standard is the gold-standard.
For more information on the service we offer, please contact us on 07841 865855. wirrallife. com 27