Elective Surgery
Thompson Animal Hospital
6615 S. Florida Ave,
Lakeland, Florida
Phone: 863-648-4886
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Elective surgeries At Thompson Animal Hospital
When your pet comes in for a surgery at Thompson Animal Hospital, special care is taken to make sure that your pet receives a safe anesthetic, proper monitoring and blood screening. We also providepain medicationto your pet before the surgery as a preventative medication and after surgery to go home with. Unfortunately, not all pet hospitals do this routinely. Our promise to you is that we will treat your pet as our own and only perform anesthesia in a manner that we would be comfortable with performing on our own pets.
When your pet first arrives at our hospital on surgery day, one of our doctors will examine him or her before anything else is done. We want to make sure that all of your pet’s vital signs are normal, and that your pet has a normal heart rate and rhythm.
Next, a small blood sample is taken for your pet’s pre-anesthetic bloodwork. This bloodwork includes a CBC and a screening chemistry panel. If there are any significant abnormalities in this bloodwork, the doctor will notify you before proceeding further. Diseases such as diabetes, kidney or liver problems and anemia are just some that can be diagnosed with pre-anesthetic bloodwork. Please note that pre-anesthetic bloodwork is just as important for young patients as well as old. Many congenital conditions can be diagnosed in young pets (for example, a portosystemic liver shunt in a Yorkshire terrier may show some abnormalities in its bloodwork).
Once the bloodwork is completed, your pet will be given pre-medications which include a sedative, and two types of pain medications. After the sedative has taken effect, the process of anesthetic induction will begin. Every anesthetic patient is intubated (a tube is placed within the windpipe to facilitate the delivery of oxygen) And then connected to the anesthesia machine. In addition to direct monitoring of heart rate, respiratory rate and temperature by our medical team, each patient is monitored with an ECG and pulse oximetry electronic machine. After surgery is completed, the initial sedative given your pet is reversed, and the anesthetic is turned off. Your pet will be monitored fully until he or she is completely awake in our recovery area.
