The University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine

Anesthesiology

Information for pet owners

Anesthesia can be intimidating for many pet owners. Anesthesia requires a delicate balance between making sure an animal is unconscious and pain-free, but not so deep as to cause a problem for the animal.

At the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, we carefully monitor each patient’s blood pressure and heart rate to ensure that the animal is getting sufficient blood flow during anesthesia. For select patients and all surgical patients, we also measure the patient’s carbon dioxide (CO2), which is a gauge of how well they are breathing, and the level of inhalant anesthesia, which allows us to measure and adjust their anesthetic to the perfect level.

All large animal patients and select small animal patients have a catheter placed into an artery to directly measure the blood pressure, which gives us the best picture of how well the patient’s blood is flowing under anesthesia.

Who will be working on my pet?

Each animal is examined by a senior veterinary student as well as the doctors assigned to the case. The student will draft a plan for the animal, which is then discussed with the supervising anesthesiologist and the other students. Any changes will be made by the anesthesiologist to ensure that your pet gets the best care possible.

Each animal has a senior student assigned to its case to place catheters, begin anesthesia, and monitor the patient. The students are directly supervised by experienced veterinary anesthesia technicians or anesthesia doctors. Particularly difficult or sick cases will be supervised continuously by one of the anesthesia doctors.

What if something goes wrong?

There is no such thing as safe anesthesia drugs — only safe anesthetists. We take every precaution to ensure your pet gets the best care.

Sometimes, due to illness or other events, an animal can experience a problem under anesthesia. In these cases, our anesthesia doctors will be on the scene in moments to resolve the situation.

Between 2003-2007, we had only 1 in 10,000 anesthetized small animals suffer cardiac arrest, and half of those survived and went home. The typical rates in small animal practice are 1 in 1,000. Numerically, our patients are 10 times less likely to have a problem than in general practice.

Can I watch?

Because the hospital is very busy, and our trained personnel need to be able to react quickly if problems develop, we cannot have animal owners or other laypeople around during anesthesia.

For large animal patients, there can be risk of injury to inexperienced people, so we ask that owners not be present during induction and recovery of large animal patients.

This page was last updated March 18, 2008.