We take care to ensure the safety of your horse when undergoing anesthesia for surgical or medical procedures. We understand that anesthesia is a major source of anxiety for owners.

The clinicians at Texas Equine Hospital have experience with equine anesthesis and perform many anesthetic procedures for equine surgery on a regular basis.  We are also able to offer the services of Dr. Courtney Baetge, DVM, Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Anesthesiologists for equine anesthesia (www.anesthesiaforanimals.com)

Before surgery we evaluate potential anesthetic risks by collecting information on the previous medical history and any other medical conditions which may be present from you and your veterinarian. If there are any reasons to be concerned about the safety of anesthesia we may recommend that blood samples are collected to assess the complete blood count (CBC) and serum biochemistries. These provide us with information about the horse’s overall health and often specifically about kidney and liver function. A preoperative physical examination may identify other problems (related to the heart and lungs).

If we have concerns about your horse’s health we may recommend other tests or procedures (for instance X-rays or ultrasound) which can be performed by your regular veterinarian or the other services at Texas Equine Hospital. In some cases after consultation with your veterinarian we may recommend referral to another specialist to work up other problems before we consider anesthesia.

Horses often find hospitalization for surgery stressful. To reduce their anxiety we give tranquillizing and pain-relieving drugs during the pre-operative period. This also allows us to safer and lower doses of anesthetic drugs.

We use state of the art anesthetic monitoring equipment. Routinely we monitor temperature, electrocardiogram, pulse, and blood pressure, level of oxygen in the blood (pulse oximetry) and respiration (end tidal carbon dioxide). Most horses receive intravenous fluids during and after the surgical procedure.