Pet Surgery Information in Erie, PA

At Erie Animal Hospital, we use a combination of pre-anesthetic medications and injectable and/or inhalant anesthetics to obtain optimum levels of anesthesia for your pet. For short procedures, an injectable anesthetic is given alone, which produces an appropriate plane of surgical anesthesia with a quicker recovery time.

For most procedures, your pet is anesthetized and then intubated (insertion of a tube into the trachea or windpipe). This ensures your pet is able to receive oxygen at all times and prevents aspiration of any fluids into the lungs. Anesthesia is maintained with a gas anesthetic, Isoflurane, that is very safe and metabolized by less than 1% of the liver. Inhalant anesthetics allow us to have better control over anesthetic depth in our patients.

Patients under anesthesia are monitored in two ways. First, a veterinary assistant is with your pet from the introduction of anesthesia all the way through until recovery. Second, your pet's pulse, heart rate, oxygen level, ECG, respiration, and temperature are all tracked and displayed on a computerized monitor.

Being in pain is no fun. We take all necessary steps to ensure your pet’s pain is appropriately managed before, during, and after surgery. This will often include prescribed pain medication to take home post-operation.

We place an IV catheter and use IV fluids during almost all anesthetic procedures, with only a few exceptions. These allow for quicker recovery from anesthesia, as well as provide quick access to the circulatory system in case of an unforeseen emergency.