Pre-Anesthetic Testing
When you place your pet in our hands, you trust us to provide your pet with the best possible medical care. You expect us to provide you with the advice which will allow you to make the best decision for your pet. In order to offer you the peace of mind you deserve, we recommend pre-anesthetic testing prior to placing your pet under anesthesia.

As in human medicine, the anesthetics available for anesthetizing pets are extremely safe. As a result, the anesthetic risk is greatly minimized when a healthy pet is placed under anesthesia. However, if your pet is not healthy, complications can occur both during and after the anesthetic procedure. Therefore, in order to minimize potential risk associated with anesthesia, it is vital for us to know the complete health status of your pet before placing him or her under anesthesia.

Prior to anesthesia, we will obtain a complete history and perform a detailed physical exam on your pet. While a history and physical exam provide us with important information about your pet's health, it cannot provide a complete picture of your pet's health. Pre-anesthetic bloodwork testing provides us an insight as to what is occurring internally. If the results of the test are within the normal ranges, we can proceed with confidence knowing the anesthetic risk is minimized. On the other hand, if the results are not within the normal ranges, we may proceed as planned yet provide the additional medical support needed to ensure your pet's health for his or her condition. In other cases, the test abnormalities may be significant enough to postpone the procedure in order to monitor and treat your pet.

Performing these tests significantly minimizes the risk to your pet and provides you and us with peace of mind. 

Bloodwork is also recommended on a routine basis for our older pets, cats seven years and older, dogs six years and older to pick up problems early.

A complete pre-anesthetic panel includes:

Albumin: reduced levels can indicate liver or kidney disease or parasitic infections
Alanine aminotransferase: elevated levels can indicate kidney disease
Alkaline phosphatase: elevated levels can indicate liver disease or Cushing's disease
Amylase: elevated levels can indicate pancreatic or kidney disease
Blood urea nitrogen: indicates liver or kidney abnormalities
Calcium: elevated levels can indicate parathyroid or kidney disease or some types of tumors
Cholesterol: elevated levels can indicate hypothyroidism or kidney or liver disease
Creatinine: elevated levels can indicate kidney or urinary tract problems
Blood glucose: high levels can indicate diabetes
Packed cell volume: indicates number of red cells present
Phosphorus: elevated levels can indicate kidney disease
Total Bilirubin: indicates bile duct disorders
Total protein: indicates dehydration or kidney, liver, or gastrointestinal tract disease

Complete blood work also checks red blood cell and white blood cell numbers and structures.  It indicates infections, viral and bacterial, some cancers, anemia and other red blood cell diseases.