[alaskayorkie]

Originally Posted by kalina82

its difficult in a multivet hospital if you don't get a choice of who you see for regular stuff. if you always see a different vet each time its tough to get comfortable with one or two of them. i usually find a vet i like and stick with the one.

even tho they are all different vets, the hospital might require them to use the same procedure for surgery. Some prefer different pre-meds to sedate before inducing anesthesia tho. usually all the vets in an office have to use the same induction drug (propofol) and gas anesthesia (Iso or Sevo), plus they should intubate the patient for surgery. they should also place an IV cath and have the patient on IV fluids throughout the surgery and recovery. heating pads are usually placed on the table with a towel over them to keep the patient warm during surgery. A tech is usually monitoring anesthesia but sometimes not, so i'd ask about that. Um lets see... some vets prefer different methods for incision closure (dissolvable sutures vs non, staples, glue... i prefer either type of suture). ask if they have to spend the night and if anyone is there 24/7 to monitor patients overnight if they require it. oh and if you want, ask for the pre-op bloodwork. ask for pain meds for the next day at least. most done need it after that but some people like to have it just in case. antibiotics are a toss up. technically they are not needed to go home with because they get a long lasting antibiotic injection during the surgery (at least most places do this). last thing i can think of is teeth. ask for her baby teeth to be pulled so you don't have to worry about them later.

remember no food or water after 10pm the night before. it doesn't matter what time the surgery is the next day really because most vets require the patients to be dropped off in the morning. different vets do surgery at certain times in a multi-vet hosp so all patients are needed to be there. also pre-op blood or tests are done in teh morning before surgery.

that's all i have right now.


oh, and i'm not sure what Cindy's vet used to bring them out of anesthesia. Where i've worked nothing is given. they are taken off of the gas anesthesia and usually wake up a few minutes later. sometimes if they are totally out, an reversal drug can be used depending on what was given as a pre-med.

Thanks, everybody, great advice. Someone on my blog suggested I visit the vet's Web site and see if there was any information on the doctors, and voila! There were mini bios on all of them. The guy who was going to do the procedure is actually the least experienced. He graduated in 2008 and just arrived here in July, so I'm guessing it's his first job.

Now the question: Is he cautious because he's received the latest in medical training, or is he cautious from inexperience?