“We don’t give the same anesthesia drugs to every patient,” says Tufts veterinary surgeon, John Berg, DVM, Your Dog’s editor-in-chief. “We adjust protocols for every dog to make the procedure as safe as possible for the individual.” For instance, he says, “there are anesthesia drugs that have minimal effects on the heart and others that affect the heart more. So for a dog with cardiac disease, we’ll probably go with an anesthetic agent that doesn’t impact the heart so much. There are similar considerations for the kidney and liver. The heart, kidney, and liver are in fact the three body systems for which we’ll sometimes choose an anesthesia drug that’s different from what we might have otherwise chosen in order to protect the organ at special risk.”
It also holds true for blood pressure, Dr. Berg adds. “Sometimes for a patient who has really poor blood pressure, we’ll pick drugs that will minimally affect that in a negative way.”
