Biggest Misconception With Multimodal Anesthesia

Gregg M. Griffenhagen, DVM, MS, DACVAA, anesthesiologist and clinical instructor at Colorado State University, talks about the biggest misconception with multimodal anesthesia or analgesia.

Multimodal anesthesia or analgesia just refers to minimizing side effects by combining multiple drugs with different sets of pharmacologic actions, Dr. Griffenhagen says. The biggest misconception he finds is that veterinarians think they have to do multimodal anesthesia all the time. There are patients you may need to do this with, he says, but it's not always necessary. Sometimes a single drug will do just find to accomplish exactly what you need it to do.