SURGERY

 Our surgeries include everything we would do if it was our own furry family member.

When comparing prices on spays and neuters – always insist on comprehensive quality care for your family member.

Our surgical practice includes:

1. A comprehensive physical exam to physically examine all aspects of your pets health – eyes, ears, mouth, gums, throat, lymph nodes, musculature, lungs, heart, abdomen, joints, skin, feet and rear end. This is necessary to make sure your pet is healthy prior to anesthesia.
2. A blood chemistry panel to verify kidney and liver health, making sure your pet is a good candidate for an anesthetic procedure. It also checks for diabetes and electrolyte imbalances which can affect anesthesia.
3. A Complete Blood Count (CBC) to check for anemia, inflammation, or infection. These conditions can also affect the anesthetic procedure.
4. Pain control. We are very aggressive about pain control at Animal Care Clinic. We always give pain relief prior to surgery, during surgery and we dispense medications for pain management at home. We routinely use nerve blocks over the surgical site so your pet does not feel the incisions. You need to insist on complete pain control anywhere you go for veterinary care. It has been shown that pain relief facilitates recovery and healing, reducing infection and surgical complication and minimizing stress to the body.
5. Intravenous (IV) catheters are placed to allow us to administer injectable anesthetic drugs. An IV catheter also allows a port for emergency drugs if needed. The catheter is used throughout surgery for fluid support. Fluid support is usually an IV solution mixed with pain relief medication. The fluid support administered by a fluid pump helps maintain healthy blood pressure, speeds recovery from anesthesia, and reduces the likelihood of organ damage while under anesthesia.
6. Sevoflurane anesthesia is the type of inhalant anesthetic used at Animal Care Clinic. It is the most advanced and the safest inhalant anesthesia available and is commonly used in human pediatrics. Animals typically recover quickly from Sevoflurane and there are fewer side effects than with other anesthetics. We intubate all pets with an endotracheal tube in order to control your pet’s airway to deliver the inhalant anesthesia. The endotracheal tube also prevents inhalation of foreign material during anesthesia.
7. A warm water bed cushions your pet while they are lying on a padded surgical table under anesthesia. The padding and the warm water bed help reduce trauma to the pet when it is lying still for an extended length of time and helps prevent hypothermia (low body temperature). Hypothermia affects the metabolism which slows recovery and increases the odds of infection and complications.
8. All surgeons wear a surgical cap, mask, shoe covers, sterile gown and sterile gloves. We use a newly sterilized surgical instrument pack for each pet and use high quality suture material for all procedures. We are the only American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) certified veterinary hospital in the Wilsonville area and as such we are required to adhere to high standards for our surgical suite.
9. Our equipment and procedures are routinely evaluated to ensure that we are providing the most current and optimal surgical care for all pets.

Surgical Monitoring

There are several ways to monitor your pet under anesthesia to make sure it is doing well. Not all of these parameters are routinely monitored in all veterinary practices. During the procedure, our state of the art monitor is closely tracking the vitals of your pet. It includes the following:

1. Electrocardiogram (ECG) – measures the heart electrically; it tells us the heart is beating normally.
   
2. Pulse Oximeter – tells us the amount of oxygen in the blood stream so we know if your pet is getting enough oxygen, It also tracks the physical pulse. This information combined with the ECG tells us that the heart is beating physically and electrically.
   
3. Blood Pressure – Monitoring blood pressure while under anesthesia ensures that there is adequate pressure to maintain circulation. This is important because if the blood pressure drops, the body will try to increase pressure by limiting blood flow to less vital organs. This can cause kidney failure in an older animal and kidney damage in a young animal, which may go unnoticed until much later in life.
4. End tidal CO2 and Respiration Rate – tell us if your pet is breathing adequately and normally.
5. Body Temperature is monitored constantly to keep your pet warm so they maintain the ability to metabolize the anesthetic drugs.

Laparoscopic Surgery

Laparoscopy is a minimally invasive technique used to view the internal structures of the abdomen. A laparoscope (camera) is inserted through a small incision site and used to magnify the internal structure onto a TV monitor.  Laparoscopy allows a veterinarian to do a more thorough examination while creating a much smaller incision site. This minimizes tissue trauma, decreases pain, and improves patient recovery.

Laparoscopy is used for many different surgical procedures including spays, biopsy, abdominal exploratory surgery, as well as examination of the ears and nose. Laparoscopy is most commonly used for spays. In a traditional spay (ovariohysterectomy) the ovaries and uterus are removed creating an incision of about 2-4 inches, but with the use of a laparoscope a veterinarian is able to perform an ovariectomy where only the ovaries are removed, creating two small incisions typically ½-1 inch in size.  Research has shown that females experience far less surgical stress, up to 65% less post-operative pain, and quicker recovery time.

Our goal at Animal Care Clinic is to minimize your pet’s pain. With the assistance of laparoscopy, we hope to get your pets back to doing what they really love, playing ball or snoozing in the sunshine as soon as possible. If your pet requires surgery, ask if laparoscopy may be an option.