A dental procedure can vary quite a bit. It usually takes 30 to 45 minutes to get anesthesia, imaging, and cleaning done. It probably takes 45 minutes for most of the cleaning and the recovery. When we find a problem, we want to treat it. That's when we will call you and talk about what's going on to decide together what needs to be done and how to treat that. Taking that into consideration, there can be vast amounts of variation in time. I specifically do just dentistry. We can do advanced things such as root canal therapy. Those procedures can add some time, but we can preserve structure and function without disease or pain. So there are good ways to go about it when indicated.

You would want to because when we're cleaning the mouth, we're cleaning, polishing, and rinsing. "Dilution is a solution to pollution," so we rinse everything out at the same time. We want to make sure we protect that airway and make it very comfortable for the cats while also keeping things clean. In doing so, we need to have the airway protected with a tube. We numb the back of their throats a bit as we insert the tube, which helps them a lot.

Here at family pet veterinary centers, we have someone dedicated and assigned to monitoring anesthesia throughout the entire time. Although anesthesia is known to be a scary thing, cats' risk of a problem is 0.11%. So it's not zero, but it is less than one. It is, in fact, very small. The reason for that is because we pay close attention, we tailor the drugs to the patient, and we do preoperative workups to ensure we have better outcomes. I think our chance of a problem occurring is less than that, mainly because of the BNP testing that we can do, because one in seven cats has a problem that you can't hear but only find with certain tests. Few clinics in the area can do the kind of testing that we can. It's relatively economical as well.

The simple answer is yes. Without dental x-rays, you're missing two-thirds of the tooth, and eighty to a hundred percent of cats age 10+ have dental problems below the gum line. Younger cats may not experience this as fast, but most of them will get dental problems in their lifetime, which can happen very early. This can only be detected with x-rays. Will they take an x-ray? I don't even want to sit still with that thing in my mouth, so we have them under anesthesia so that we can look very closely. We're talking about very small teeth that are tiny compared to people. And there are only 30 of them. We need to preserve the eight structural ones, the big canines, reserved for chewing and acting like fingers.

I am a big believer in pain medication. We usually use nerve blocks, but we also use pain meds before, during, and after the procedure. For example, all of my patients get Cerenia, which is labeled to be an anti-nausea drug. It's important because it helps with anesthetic recoveries and is a pain management drug. It's just not a standalone pain management drug. Pets are given opioid meds, nerve blocks, and things to extend the nerve blocks. They're also given something for pain control, not numbness, during the procedure and up to three days after. They're also given pain meds to take at home when indicated. So we don't skimp on pain medication, but we use a little bit of a lot of things to avoid side effects or negative effects.

We have them here all day, or at least for the morning. We start with premeds, make sure they're comfortable, induce them, get images, and then clean the teeth. That takes at least 45 minutes. Once we find problems, we talk to you about it and decide if we're going to treat them then and there. That adds to the time, so it can vary. It all depends on what's going on.