Surgery is generally divided into soft tissue surgeries and
orthopedic surgeries. Orthopedic surgeries focus on bones, tendons, and
joints (e.g. fracture and ligament repair), while soft tissue surgeries
encompass abdomen, chest, mouth and skin, (e.g. bowel, bladder and
wound repair).
The most common surgeries performed in a veterinary hospital are
elective soft tissue surgeries such as spays (ovariohystercectomy) and
neuters (orchiectomy).
What We Offer
Veterinary surgery has undergone a tremendous revolution. With recent
advances in equipment and instrumentation, anesthesia and pain
management, veterinarians are now able to offer exciting surgical
treatment options that only a few years ago would have involved
considerably greater risk and discomfort to our animal patients.
Medications and Equipment
Our hospital offers inhalant anesthetics (e.g. isoflurane) and
patient monitoring protocols (e.g. blood pressure measurements) for your
pet during surgery.
Peri-operative pain is managed using epidural analgesia and nerve blocks. For post-operative pain, pain killing drugs are used.
Procedures
We offer several surgical techniques and instrumentation (e.g.
surgical lasers, laparoscopy, orthopedic implants) that allow us to
perform many different procedures surgical procedures on our patients.
All of our staff veterinarians are trained in basic surgery, but just
as in human medicine, the expertise needed for advanced procedures
(e.g. orthopedic surgery) calls for additional interest and training and
at times board certification as a surgical specialist. We will let you
know our recommendations for your pet's surgery.
Anesthesia for your Pet
Veterinarians anesthetize animals on a daily basis. Anesthesia is an understandably common concern of many pet owners.
Why Anesthesia?
Modern anesthesia - be it human or veterinary is very safe. Unlike
our human counterparts, veterinarians deal with patients that must be
anesthetized for procedures other than surgery. It is often necessary to
anesthetize or sedate our patients for diagnostic procedures such as
accurate orthopedic examination, diagnostic radiology or when performing
ultrasound guided biopsies.
Anesthesia helps our patients sufficiently relax in order for us to
gather accurate diagnostic information, or to perform a more safe
diagnostic or therapeutic procedure.
Pre-Anesthetic Blood Work
It is important that you know that for any anesthetic procedure,
pre-anesthetic blood work is usually run on patients. Such blood testing
is performed to check the kidneys, the liver, blood sugar and protein
levels. As well, red and white blood cell information is determined.
All of the blood work parameters allow us to minimize the risks to
your pet that can be associated with anesthesia. More extensive blood
testing is performed in our more senior patients for this same reason of
safety.
Intravenous Fluids
Intravenous fluids may be administered during anesthesia. Many drugs
used for general anesthesia tend to cause decreases in blood pressure.
Intravenous fluids combat this decrease.
In addition, if there are any unforeseen adverse reactions under
anesthesia, an intravenous catheter allows immediate intravenous
administration of potentially live saving medications.
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