1Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA.
2Department of Cellular Biology, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA.
J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2023 Jan 19;261(4):536-543. doi: 10.2460/javma.22.10.0477.
To summarize the anesthetic events of snakes seen at a large university hospital, identify challenges with record keeping, and assess patient and anesthesia-related morbidity and death.
139 anesthetic events were performed; only 106 cases had detailed anesthetic reports available for further analyses.
Medical records of snakes that underwent general anesthesia between October 2000 and January 2022 were retrospectively reviewed. Only cases with complete anesthesia records were used to assess anesthetic parameters. Collected data included general patient details, diagnoses, procedures, premedication, induction, maintenance, monitoring, and recovery.
A thorough review of the records identified issues or scenarios that resulted in poor record management as well as highlighted the most frequently used anesthetics in snakes. For premedication this was alfaxalone, butorphanol, and hydromorphone, whereas isoflurane, alfaxalone, or propofol were the most common with induction. Lastly, with maintenance, isoflurane was the most popular choice. Of the 139 cases performed, 127 animals recovered, 8 were euthanatized due to poor prognosis, and 4 failed to recover. All snakes that failed to recover had preexisting disease identified pre-, peri-, or postoperatively at necropsy.
General anesthesia can be reliably and safely undertaken in snakes without severe preexisting disease. Efforts should be directed at identifying preexisting disease and maintaining and completing anesthesia records, and we recommend an auditing system to identify and correct issues as they arise.
总结一家大型大学医院所见蛇类的麻醉事件，确定记录保存方面的挑战，并评估患者和麻醉相关发病率和死亡率。
共进行了 139 次麻醉事件，只有 106 例有详细的麻醉报告可进一步分析。
回顾 2000 年 10 月至 2022 年 1 月期间接受全身麻醉的蛇的医疗记录。仅使用具有完整麻醉记录的病例来评估麻醉参数。收集的数据包括一般患者详细信息、诊断、手术、术前用药、诱导、维持、监测和恢复。
对记录的彻底审查确定了导致记录管理不善的问题或情况，并突出了蛇类最常使用的麻醉剂。对于术前用药，这是阿尔法酮、丁丙诺啡和氢吗啡酮，而诱导时最常用的是异氟烷、阿尔法酮或丙泊酚。最后，在维持阶段，异氟烷是最受欢迎的选择。在进行的 139 例病例中，127 只动物恢复，8 只因预后不良而安乐死，4 只未恢复。所有未恢复的蛇在尸检时都有术前、术中和术后发现的预先存在的疾病。
在没有严重预先存在疾病的情况下，蛇类可以可靠且安全地进行全身麻醉。应努力确定预先存在的疾病，并维持和完成麻醉记录，我们建议建立一个审核系统，以发现和纠正出现的问题。
