Sedation and drowsiness are the big ones. Of course, we expect that but that sometimes can linger longer than we like. Another side effect can be that they're not only just sedated, but they're a little drunk or dysphoric, so they don't know what's going on, and they might act a little different than your normal pet would act. That’s why we take care to monitor them before, during, and after the procedure.

What we call our pre-medication has pain management in it. By doing that ahead of time, you are already calming your pet and giving that pain medicine before the pain stimulus happens. If you've ever heard of windup pain, if you don't control the pain before it happens, then it takes a lot more pain medication to help them after it happens. Then during the procedure, they would have either injectable or inhalant anesthesia that would help control pain. Then afterward, they go home on pain medication as well.

Yes, that depends on the type of procedure we're doing. There might be some rapid anesthesia, it might be minutes, and then there's some that might be hours.

Those two things we just mentioned are significant. There's a lot that goes into the physical exam in assessing your pet's overall wellness—of course, the blood work results. The other thing that we do to ensure your pet’s safety during anesthesia is the monitoring that we do before, during, and after anesthesia.

We perform a physical exam on all our patients before they undergo sedation or anesthesia. Most of the time, we're going to recommend, or even possibly require, blood work, depending on what we're doing.