Anesthesia Procedures for Cats

Video Transcript

"Hi this Dr. Greg McDonald for Expert Village.com. We are talking about anesthetic in your cat that needs to have a dental cleaning. Cats are really what we are talking bout today and we were going to talk a little bit about how and why we put them under for anesthesia. Cats are fairly easy to anesthetize because they take the anesthetic acids in very quickly and they go to sleep very quickly. This is an anesthetic machine right here and we use a product called Isoflorine. Isoflorine is the same product that might be used in human medicine. It is state of the art anesthetic anesthesia and what happens with it is as the animal breathes it in they go to sleep basically, they are still awake, breathing and their heart is going fine but they are limp and we can do anything we want to as far as opening their mouth and cleaning their teeth. After we mass them down with this machine, the Isoflorine and oxygen, then we put an endotracheal tube into their trachea. The endotracheal tube is very important because we are using an ultrasonic scaler. The ultrasonic scaler is designed to knock all the tartar off but it also blows a lot of bacteria into the air and we want to have them a protected airway. This airway has a little cuff down here that blows up and the anesthetic acid is going through this and into the animal and it also protects them so they don’t get bacteria in their lungs. It maintains the anesthetic __________ while we have the animal under. We also have a high speed drill in the event that we do need to do some special care lift of the animals as far as drilling the teeth or filling the teeth and this is another high speed. It has light, vacuum suction and also has a water source so you can keep the teeth cool as you are drilling. Again we don’t have to use this very much but if we find a cavity or some time there is a very difficult extraction you can take it out with the drill. At McDonald Animal Hospital while your animal is under anesthesia we also have an IV catheter that is in a vein. This IV catheter is placed prior to anesthesia and that way we have an open line so that we can give your cat any kind of medication that might be an emergency medication. We also have them on IV fluids and that is a viable replacement to keep the fluids going while your cat is under anesthesia. Again, to maintain an open vein so that we can give emergency drugs if we need to but also to keep them well hydrated so that the kidneys will be profused properly and we won’t have any secondary problems when your cat wakes up. So these are some of the precautions that should be taken when you put your cat under an anesthesia for cleaning. "