Pre–Anesthetic Testing

Why we recommend pre anesthetic testing:

1. Animals going under anesthesia require their internal organs, especially kidney and liver to be functioning appropriately in order to be able to metabolize anesthetic drugs.
2. Animals suffering from anemia, dehydration, and/or low proteins may struggle during the surgery/anesthesia and with recovery.

Pre- anesthetic blood testing helps to detect these problems and address them in a few different ways:

1. Changing anesthetic drugs
2. Correct the underlying problem (potential delaying of the procedure)
3. Discussing increased risks versus benefit from procedure

As senior animals tend to be at higher risk of underlying problems, blood work is compulsory for all of our patients aged 7 or older.

Younger animals tend to be lower risk; however, this may be an opportunity to detect underlying conditions and establish a baseline for future reference.