Anesthesiology & Pain Management

Becoming a certified veterinary acupuncturist is a long and involved process, but it can recap big rewards for your patients and your practice.

Dr. Victoria Lukasik busts a myth and offers a tip on how to subdue a fractious cat.

Endoscopy is the process of looking inside the body by inserting a rigid or flexible tube into the body and examining an image of the interior of an organ or cavity. An additional instrument may be inserted in order to biopsy tissue or retrieve foreign objects.

The purpose of this talk today is to discuss a variety of issues for general anesthesia of patients undergoing non-elective procedures. This will include anesthetic tips for urinary tract obstruction, cesarean section, gastric dilation volvulus, and foreign body removal.

Traditionally, analgesic drugs like opioids, alpha-2 agents, local anesthetics, NSAIDs and dissociative anesthetics have been administered as a single dose treatment. When drugs are given in this manner, the patient will experience peaks and troughs in the plasma drug level.

Liver disease patients can present with a diverse clinical spectrum. Patients with mild liver disease can be expected to have fewer problems with general anesthesia than patients with severe, fulminant disease.

Hypotension is a very common complication in the anesthetized patient, especially when the patient is maintained with inhalant anesthetics. Blood pressure is simple to measure in the anesthetized patient, and is very helpful to monitor depth of anesthesia and overall patient welfare.

Many types of anesthetic machines are now available for veterinary use. Retired machines from human hospitals are also commonly used by veterinarians.

Some random thoughts about cats: We all know they are not small dogs, but I think a certain discomfort with feline anesthesia persists with many veterinarians. Why is that?

Alpha-2 agonists have achieved widespread popularity in veterinary medicine for their sedative and analgesic properties. They can be valuable adjuncts in anesthetic protocols.

Many patients undergoing this diagnostic procedure will have signs of obstructive upper airway disease. They are dyspneic and easily stressed.

Multimodal analgesia, so called balanced analgesia, was introduced by Dahl et al in 1990 in order to minimize the adverse effects of opioids. These include respiratory depression, sedation, dysphoria,

General and specialty practice provide a number of analgesia challenges: those cases that dont fit the simple mold of opioids and NSAIDs.

The Cartesian model of pain imagines the somatosensory system as a simple, predictable, proportional line of communication directly linking, without altering, pain signals as they are transmitted from the periphery to the brain for conscious perception.

It is apparent that the primary, if not only, reason to assess pain is to take action to relieve pain. However, one of the most challenging responsibilities of veterinary professionals is pain assessment.

Whenever confronted with a painful animal, one should consider employing a considerable effort to control the pain as best as possible and as early as possible. T

Benefits of pain management in the acute situation

Acupuncture is the act of placing a needle into the body at a specific point in order to get a desired effect.

You can never become good at pain management without understanding basic pain pathways.

Probably the most common condition associated with osteoarthritis, post-surgery and musculoskeletal abnormalities.

Most commonly used veterinary pain drug

Small animal patients with cardiac disease and/or congenital abnormalities can be challenging and sometimes intimidating patients.

Seattle company to market medical marijuana patch to control pain in dogs, horses.

To make your pain control measures top-notch, construct a scaffold of appropriate pain medications.

Constant rate infusion (CRI) analgesia is a way of providing pain control by ensuring that the blood levels of the drugs are held constant. In practice, it entails maintaining a venous access. This technique can be used during anesthesia as part of balancing the anesthetic technique and continued to the postoperative period.