How do I know if my dog will have a reaction to anesthesia?

If your dog has had problems before, we would want to be extra careful. As I mentioned, we evaluate every dog as an individual. We look for risk factors based on their breed, based on their age, or based on concurrent health problems. Having that dedicated technician there monitoring for any problem as it comes up is the best we can do to ensure your dog stays safe. Anesthesia is never 100% free of complications. We can't guarantee that. But we do everything we can to make sure your dog is safe. In general, I feel like we have an excellent safety record and do well. I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying that.

So that's a widespread concern of clients and totally understandable, but we take anesthesia very seriously. The first thing we’re going to do is a physical exam on your pet to get a general assessment. We will do a blood and heart screening to make sure the pet has good, healthy parameters. And if they do, then anesthetic complications are extremely rare. And if your pet does have some pre-existing conditions, then we're going to address those. And if we know about these preexisting conditions, in many cases, we can work around those with our anesthetic protocols so that we can still deal with the pet's dental disease, even in a pet who has some preexisting heart condition or liver condition-or kidney disease. We’re quite confident in our protocols. And again, it is all but unheard of to have an issue.

That's a good question, and we can't always tell. We do a lot of things to increase the safety of our anesthetic procedures. With a dental cleaning, we do require pre-anesthetic blood work, which checks for infection, blood counts, the functions of the liver and the kidneys, and the pet's electrolytes. It does a lot of things to tell us how safe it is to put them under anesthesia. It doesn't tell us whether or not they might have a reaction. Just like in people, there are complications associated with anesthesia, but they are few and far between.

It's not always possible to know if a dog will have a reaction to anesthesia. If your dog has had a reaction before, it's important to inform your veterinarian. Anesthesia is generally safe, but it's essential to monitor the dog closely for any complications. Veterinarians usually have medical consents and encourage pet owners to ask questions and address any concerns before the procedure begins.

It's impossible to know for certain if your dog will have a reaction to anesthesia until it is administered. However, veterinarians take several precautions to minimize this risk. Before anesthetizing your dog, they will perform a full lab workup, a pre-surgical EKG, and a physical examination to identify any potential concerns. If any issues are found, they will be addressed before proceeding with anesthesia.