Are there certain conditions that can increase my dog's risk of a reaction while under anesthesia?

Yes, and we have a way to assess that and a grading system that grades the risk of anesthesia of each pet, whether there is little to no risk or high risk. If they have any underlying conditions or diseases ahead of time, whether that's maybe a heart murmur or heart disease or if they are overweight—those are risk factors. Then other things might be if they have any breathing difficulty or kidney problems. All of those things are increasing their risk for anesthesia.

We want to make sure that those diseases are controlled. Many times these diseases that I just mentioned aren't curable, but they're managed. We want to make sure that they're under control before we anesthetize the pet. The other thing that we haven't mentioned yet is the type of anesthesia that we choose would vary depending on the pet's risk. We might choose quicker-acting anesthesia that they go under quickly and then recover quickly.

Yes, if your dog has had any kind of side effects from general anesthesia in the past, we would want to know about it. Certain dogs also have different risk factors. For instance, sight hounds like greyhounds, border collies with an MDR1 gene recession mutation, and old English Bulldogs with smushy faces have higher risks associated with general anesthesia.