Busting Anesthesia and Pain Management Myths

Tasha McNerney, CVT, CVPP, anesthesia technician at the Center for Animal Referral and Emergency Services, busts some myths surrounding anesthesia and pain management.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability).

“Alright, so we’re talking about anesthesia myths; there are certainly a lot out there but one I find that comes up a lot and the subject is close to my heart is the issue of dexmedetomidine. So many people use the drug dexmedetomidine simply as a sedative and they don’t think that it functions as an analgesic and that’s not true.

If you actually look at the box of Dexdomitor, it says on it: sedative and analgesic. That’s a really cool thing about this drug, not only can you use it as a sedative, but you can use it as part of your pre-med as an analgesic to help enhance the analgesic effects of [the] opioids you’re using. Unlike a drug like acepromazine, which doesn’t have analgesic effects, if you use hydromorphone plus Dexdomitor together in the pre-operative period, you’re getting great pain control and that’s really what we want, right?

[We want] really good pain control for our patients in the pre-op and in the post-op and you can use Dexdomitor for its analgesic and sedative effects in the post-op period as well. So again, it’s not sitting on your shelf just to be used as a sedative. We really want to use the drug to its full capacity, [as] a sedative and analgesic.”