RVN's perceptions of confidence levels of veterinary professionals when assessing pain in rabbits

In human medicine, doctors can rely on their patient's ability to communicate where the pain is and how much pain they are in, however, we cannot communicate in the same language as animals and so we...

Anaesthetic management of caesarean sections in dogs

The anaesthetic plan must aim for maternal and neonatal survival, presenting a unique challenge to the anaesthetist. Exposure of the fetuses to anaesthetic drugs, since many cross the placenta...

Anaesthesia in small rodents

The pre-anaesthetic phase comprises a thorough pre-anaesthetic evaluation to include a clinical history and a physical examination, as well as selecting the appropriate pre-anaesthetic drugs and...

The potential benefit of local anaesthetics during routine ovariohysterectomy

Woolf (2011) defined the three types of pain as: neurological, this stems from the nervous system because of abnormal function; nociceptive, this is a result of a noxious stimulus damaging the...

Know your NSAIDs

When the phospholipid (PLA2) layer of the cell membrane of tissue is injured or damaged, it leads to the activation and release of inflammatory mediators. These create an acidic environment referred...

Pharmacology of opioids and application to practice

Pain is an unpleasant experience providing sensory and emotional components to actual or potential tissue damage (McKune et al, 2015)..

Anaesthetic management of paediatric and neonatal patients

Although young patients are capable of rapid repair, it was stated by Rigotti and Brearley (2016) that these patients have a reduced capacity to compensate in response to physiological changes that...

Acute pancreatitis in canine patients

Pancreatitis is described as the most common exocrine disease affecting both canines and felines (Steiner, 2020). Premature activation of digestive enzymes results in pancreatic autodigestion, leading...

Preparing, monitoring and recovering the thoracic surgery patient

The acute presentation patient will always demand the most attention from those in the practice and it will be necessary to consider whether the patient is dyspnoeic and/or has increased...

A multimodal approach to hindlimb surgical analgesia: femoral and sciatic nerve blocks

In a recent review, Hunt et al (2015) provided an overview of analgesia prescription in veterinary practice by use of questionnaire; they concluded that there has been a marked increase in...

Dental Anaesthesia and Analgesia of the Dog and Cat

Drug selection should be made on a case by case basis, considering pre-anaesthetic clinical findings, American Society of Anaesthesiologists (ASA) status (Table 1), patient signalment, temperament and...

Pain scoring systems in the canine and feline patient

Increased recognition of the significance of animal pain and the necessity to control it has led to veterinary professionals looking to human medicine for guidance in how to quantify pain, a...

A feline patient undergoing tail amputation and excisional arthroplasty of the left hip joint

On admission the cat's vital parameters were determined: heart rate (HR) was 168 beats per minute and respiratory rate (RR) 48 breaths per minute (Table 1). This elevation in RR may have been due to...