There is a fairly common belief that all veterinarians perform surgery in the exact same way, using the exact same anesthetics, and therefore all surgeries are “high risk” procedures. In truth, there is an impressive array of anesthetics and surgical techniques used on animals now-a-days. An inexpensive spay performed at a rescue, is not the same procedure performed at most good quality veterinary hospitals. The rule that “you get what you pay for,” is especially true when it comes to anesthesia and surgery.
At the West Hazleton Veterinary Hospital, we take surgery very seriously. We insist on presurgical blood tests to make sure that the animals are healthy enough for anesthesia. We use only short acting or reversible injectable anesthetics. Except for very short procedures that require only mild anesthesia, we entubate our patients so that we can breath for them if they don’t breath on their own. While the animal is asleep, we monitor their ECG, blood oxygen level, and respiratory rate, to make sure the patient is not getting into trouble. While it is impossible to make anesthesia 100% safe, our goal is to make it as safe as possible for all of our patients.