Abstract
To describe how small animal anaesthesia and analgesia is performed in English-speaking Canada, document any variation among practices especially in relation to practice type and veterinarian's experience and compare results to published guidelines. Observational study, electronic survey. 126 respondents. A questionnaire was designed to assess current small animal anaesthesia and analgesia practices in English-speaking Canadian provinces, mainly in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. The questionnaire was available through SurveyMonkey® and included four parts: demographic information about the veterinarians surveyed, evaluation and management of anaesthetic risk, anaesthesia procedure, monitoring and safety. Year of graduation and type of practice were evaluated as potential risk factors. Exact chi-square tests were used to study the association between risk factors and the association between risk factors and survey responses. For ordinal data, the Mantel-Haenszel test was used instead. Response rate over a period of 3 months was 12.4% (126 respondents out of 1 016 invitations). Current anaesthesia and analgesia management failed to meet international guidelines for a sizable number of participants, notably regarding patient evaluation and preparation, safety and monitoring. Nearly one third of the participants still consider analgesia as optional for routine surgeries. Referral centres tend to follow guidelines more accurately and are better equipped than general practices. A proportion of surveyed Canadian English-speaking general practitioners do not follow current small animal anaesthesia and analgesia guidelines, but practitioners working in referral centres are closer to meet these recommendations.
Highlights
Anaesthesia takes place almost every day in small animal veterinary practice
A proportion of surveyed Canadian English-speaking general practitioners do not follow current small animal anaesthesia and analgesia guidelines, but practitioners working in referral centres are closer to meet these recommendations
The authors concluded that the level of care in French-speaking Eastern Canada failed to meet published guidelines for several criteria. This was the most concerning finding, especially regarding analgesia standard of care [6]. They found that several demographic factors such as the type of veterinary practice, either general practice (GP) or referral centre, the veterinarian’s gender and year of graduation influenced different aspects of anaesthesia [6]
Summary
Anaesthesia takes place almost every day in small animal veterinary practice. Several guidelines have been published, including recommendations for best practice in pre-anaesthetic workup, anaesthetic monitoring, and analgesia [1,2,3,4,5]. The authors concluded that the level of care in French-speaking Eastern Canada failed to meet published guidelines for several criteria This was the most concerning finding, especially regarding analgesia standard of care (client prompted optional analgesia for 29% of respondents) [6]. They found that several demographic factors such as the type of veterinary practice, either general practice (GP) or referral centre, the veterinarian’s gender and year of graduation influenced different aspects of anaesthesia [6]. We hypothesised that the type of veterinary practice and the veterinarian’s experience would influence anaesthetic care
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
