Our Services > Surgery
What you need to know about your pet's surgery
When your animal comes in for surgery or a procedure that requires anesthesia or sedation, you will be asked to sign a consent form. There are questions that will be asked regarding whether your animal has been fasting overnight, whether we are to do blood tests before the procedure, and whether you want your animal on IV fluids during the procedure. There will also be a question of whether you want us to place a microchip for identification in your animal while he or she is under sedation.
These are all recommendations that incur more expense, so we place these questions on the consent form so that you will know what expense to expect and to give clients a chance to ask questions or deny the service if the expense is more than they can afford.
Blood tests that include some kidney and liver enzymes and blood glucose help us determine if there is an underlying problem such as kidney failure, diabetes or other conditions that would change what anesthetic regimen we would use or indicate we should not do a certain procedure. Many times these blood tests have been done several days before the procedure with blood sent out to a lab for results. If that has not been done we can do a short profile in the office that day which will help us determine these things.
The IV fluids are recommended for anesthesia as an added measure of safety to help keep the blood pressure at a good level and to help combat dehydration from the fasting. The fluids help to maintain good blood flow to the kidneys and other organs during anesthesia. The IV line also gives us a more direct route of administration of drugs that might be necessary if any complications happen during the procedure.
The microchip for identification doesn't really affect the procedure in any way, but this is a convenient time to place the chip when your pet won't feel the needle used to place it.
We use the consent form as a way to inform you as a client as to what we recommend and need to know before your animal has a procedure done. Hopefully, it is a time that we can answer any questions you have that have not been answered beforehand.
Please let us know if there are questions you have regarding any procedure that we will be doing on your pet. As with any medical procedure, even though we expect good results there may be complications or situations that arise that have not anticipated.
Download this info sheet (PDF format).