General Anaesthesia

Each surgical patient at Brandon Park Veterinary Hospital receives a general anaesthetic for all surgical procedures. This ensures the procedure can be carried out safely, in the shortest possible time and with the least discomfort to your pet.

We tailor each anaesthetic, choosing the best options to suite the particular needs of each patient. (Please see our hand-out on anaesthetic management for more details)

1. Preanaesthetic sedation and pain relief

Prior to every general anaesthesia, patients are given a mild sedative which also includes an Opioid pain relief injection to help calm and provide pre-emptive pain control.

2. Induction

Patients are then given an intravenous anaesthetic induction agent which quickly sends them under anaesthesia, allowing us to intubate them. There are several different induction anaesthetic agents available, allowing us to tailor anaesthetics according to the individual needs of each patient.

3. Intubation

An endotracheal tube is then placed and connected to an anaesthetic gas machine. This enables patients to be maintained at a surgical plane of anaesthesia where they are asleep, breathing on their own and unable to feel any pain.

An anaesthetic gas is the safest means of maintaining an adequate plane of surgical anaesthesia. Furthermore we use Isofluorane anaesthetic gas which is one of the safest anaesthetic gasses available (commonly used in human hospitals). The benefit of isofluorane is that it is quickly eliminated from the system simply by breathing it out. This ensures a smooth and rapid recovery after the procedure, and therefore helps reduce the risks during anaesthesia.

4. Monitoring

During every procedure a dedicated theatre nurse is on hand to monitor each patient. With the aid of modern anaesthetic monitoring equipment our theatre nurse is able to carefully monitor: