Читать книгу Surgery of Exotic Animals - Группа авторов - Страница 14

Many surgeries in exotic animal are analogous to those performed in other species. The size of some patients makes surgery more challenging. Appropriate preoperative work up, patient preparation, surgeon preparation, perioperative antibiotic therapy, thermal support, and hemostasis are essential for a successful outcome. Preemptive, multimodal analgesia has long been known to improve recovery from surgery and is especially important with wildlife and exotic prey species. Additionally, in recent years, patients’ anxiety has become an important consideration when these patients have to be hospitalized. Use medications evaluated for the species having surgery to develop a preemptive analgesic and antianxiety treatment plan. When prey species experience anxiety, stress, fear, and pain, they often die for no apparent reason. Alternatively, they may recover from the surgical event only to die a day or two later, likely from these stresses. In pet species, it appears that if they are accustomed to being handled by humans they are more likely to survive the perioperative period. If multiple procedures need to be accomplished, as a general rule, it is better to perform multiple short anesthetic events and surgeries than to try to do everything under one long anesthetic event. This is especially true when imaging is needed for surgical planning. It is best to anesthetize the patient for imaging, then recover it and evaluate the study. Once a diagnosis is made and a plan developed, anesthetize the patient the next day for the surgical procedure.

It is important that patients resume eating for nutritional support as soon as possible after surgery. Many small patients are not able to undergo long periods of anorexia because they do not have the energy stores to support themselves because in their natural environment they are constantly eating. The nutritional needs of the patient must be addressed and supplemented as needed either per os, using a feeding tube, or intravenously.