Blood tests are an excellent diagnostic tool for veterinarians. They can show us what is going on internally with your pet, such as organ function, and cellular activity. Blood tests can give us insight into what illness could be affecting your pet. Annual bloodwork for senior pets can help with early detection of kidney disease, diabetes, and other issues senior pets often face.
Tantallon Veterinary Hospital is equipped with a full range of in-house lab machines, so all samples are run on site and results are available in a short amount of time.
Pre Anesthetic Bloodwork
Bloodwork before any surgical procedure is always a good idea, as it gives us a better overall picture of your pet’s health and well-being. We offer pre-surgical bloodwork to all pets who are undergoing surgeries such as spay or neuter to make sure the anesthetic will be safe for them. Testing the blood of a healthy pet is also a great way to have a baseline level for what is normal for your pet.
A small amount of blood is drawn by one of our veterinarians or technicians. The blood is analyzed to check for a variety of internal health parameters. This allows us to carefully choose which anesthetics and postoperative pain medications are the safest for your pet. It also tells us if there is any trouble or ill health, which may not be apparent on physical examination. If there are abnormalities in any of the parameters of the bloodwork we can either postpone the procedure and retest your pet at a later time, or suggest further diagnostics to get to the underlying disease process, or change the drug protocol and proceed with the surgery. This all equates to safe and uneventful anesthetic.