Useful Information

Analgesia

All of our veterinary patients deserve an appropriate level of analgesia for their particular condition and/or surgery. There’s loads of good options available, and thankfully they have been very well documented by the Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia Group for quick, easy and reliable reference (it is run by Robert Stein who is a Diplomate of the American Academy of Pain Management, and moderator of the VIN anaesthesia and analgesia message boards).

Fentanyl patches are commonly used, and are fairly effective for most patients for post-operative pain. For more information, click here.

Morphine, ketamine and lignocaine (MLK) or Fentanyl, ketamine and lidocaine (FLK) constant rate infusions (CRI) are very easy to set up, and offer the advantage of being able to titrate them to effect, as opposed to epidurals, which tend to require more post-operative nursing care and carry some degree of risk. Below are some user-friendly spreadsheets that help to calculate the doses required – take care to use the correct spreadsheet that corresponds to the concentration of morphine that you stock. You can adjust the volume of the diluent to suit a syringe pump (20ml or 50mL syringes) or a standard fluid pump (500mL or 1000mL bag of fluids). Adjust the fluid delivery rate in the sheet to give about 6-8 hours of analgesia, so you can effectively keep your patient comfortable over the course of the day. You can slowly turn down the delivery rate to wean them off it and provide a smooth pain free recovery from surgery. This works out to be about 2.5mL/h for a 20mL syringe, 6mL/h for a 50mL syringe, and 125mL/h for a 1L bag in a standard fluid pump (don’t forget to accommodate for this volume in calculation of total hourly fluid rates).

Downloadable CRI spreadsheets:

10mg/mL morphine-lidocaine-ketamine CRI calculator

30mg/mL morphine-lidocaine-ketamine CRI calculator

Fentanyl-Lidocaine-Ketamine CRI calculator

Monitoring

Orthopaedic procedures tend to take a bit longer than routine elective surgeries and need an anaesthetic chart to record all of the patient monitoring over a longer period. This Anaesthetic chart (a fillable PDF form) is very comprehensive and covers up to 4 hours on one page. Feel free to download and use it.

Mobile Surgery Service Agreement

To gain an understanding of how our services can be effectively incorporated into your practice work flow, please refer to this document. If there’s something you would like to discuss, please feel free to contact us.

Physiotherapists and Hydrotherapy

Surgery is just one part of the recovery process – most orthopaedic cases respond much better and quicker with the help of active rehabilitation. Click here to find animal physiotherapists in South-East Queensland.