Reptile Anaesthesia

Re: Reptile Anaesthesia

Mark Hedberg — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 18:23:16 GMT

[quote user="Meow1950"]

always doing that would be extremely helpful.

[/quote]

Exactly. Always, always, always manually ventilate. :)

Re: Reptile Anaesthesia

Meow1950 — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 12:53:42 GMT

Thanks so much for the advice! I did manual ventilation for the latter half of the last op we did and it worked well so we were saying we think always doing that would be extremely helpful. And I've made the suggestion of always using a doppler. When using a stethoscope I put a damp cloth between it and the animal, do you not usually do this with the doppler then apart from in tortoises?

Re: Reptile Anaesthesia

jojofruits — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:04:09 GMT

Doppler doppler doppler.

Its impossible to monitor properly without it in my opinion, often the animal is on a ventilator and you cant hear a thing with a stethescope but a doppler monitor taped either directly over the heart, or in tortoises in the crevice between their front leg and the shell really does help.

tortoises can be auscultated more easily if you use a damp towel over the shell

hope that helps?

J x

Re: Reptile Anaesthesia

Mark Hedberg — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 23:39:17 GMT

Do you manually ventilate? It's important to remember that reptiles don't have a diaphragm and so use their thoracic muscles to breathe; under anaesthesia they may be underventilated and so not get enough anaesthetic agent.