Anaesthesia and Analgesia
What does anaesthesia do?
Anaesthesia is a temporary and controlled loss of sensation or awareness induced for medical/veterinary purposes. This can be local, general or both combined. Analgesia is the medical act of relieving pain.
Just like human medicine, surgery and other invasive procedures performed on animals cannot and should not be performed without anaesthesia and pain management. All anaesthesia involves some risk, especially in animals with underlying health conditions. This risk can be significantly reduced when the anaesthesia is overseen by an anaesthetist-led team, individually tailored to the patient, performed by an experienced and motivated anaesthesia team, and advanced medical equipment is being used.
Another essential function of veterinary anaesthesia is overseeing the sedation and anaesthesia for non-invasive diagnostic procedures. Anaesthesia or sedation provides the essential immobility required for good-quality advanced diagnostic studies to be obtained. Without it, the studies might be negatively affected by patient movement, making them difficult to interpret or decreasing their diagnostic capability.
An anaesthetist is a veterinary specialist who has undergone extensive training and passed specialisation exams in veterinary anaesthesia and analgesia across multiple species. The team also includes veterinarians and nurses who have extensive training in the field of anaesthesia.