Monitoring Tools You Need for Administering Anesthesia

Khursheed Mama, DVM, DACVAA, professor of veterinary anesthesiology at Colorado State University, highlights some of the tools you need to monitor patients undergoing anesthesia at your veterinary clinic.

Monitoring is probably one of the most vital steps in ensuring good anesthetic outcomes, Dr. Mama says. Blood pressure monitoring is the number one piece of monitoring equipment. About 28-32% of healthy animals have low blood pressure, so there's a high complication rate but it's very treatable.

Other important monitoring tools for administering anesthesia are electrocardiograms, which are helpful to ascertain rhythm abnormalities; pulse oximeters, which can give you saturation and heart rate minute to minute; and capnographs, which give you carbon dioxide and indicate ventilation.