Risks of anesthesia

[zandperl]

Parrot owners often discuss the risks involved with anesthesia for birds, but I've never seen an actual study of it. Well, I still haven't for birds, but dolittler_blog just pointed to the most commonly cited study for cats and dogs undergoing anesthesia. The study is 15 years old, which shows that it's a very little-researched topic if there's no better newer

Comments

[jamijo]

I think the biggest culprit here is the training--human anesthesia must be administered by a CRNA or anesthesiologist. CRNAs have extensive nursing training (bachelor degree) plus the anesthesia training (masters programs), anesthesiologists are MDs who have completed residencies specifically for anesthesia administration and maintenance. Both must also be board-certified in their specialty in order to be able to practice. Veterinarians also go through years upon years of classroom & clinical training plus boards, but they're generally not as specialized as practitioners of human medicine, and I think that shows in the morbidity & mortality rates relating to anesthesia.

That being said, I think it's a ill-advised and risky to *avoid* anesthesia for procedures where it's needed. Having experience with a bird having a bad reaction to anesthesia hasn't changed my opinion in any way with this, either. Putting a bird under general anesthesia for a routine blood draw or nail trim is risking an adverse reaction for convenience matters only, and in most cases those will be situations where the risk outweighs the benefits of the anesthesia. But having a bird put under general anesthesia for more invasive procedures such as surgeries are really all about trying to save a birds life. Microchipping is a little less cut-and-dry, since it's a preventative as opposed to a corrective procedure, but I would certainly consider taking the risk on for it if my birds were ever going to be flighted in any way (or outside even unflighted without being in a carrier).

[zandperl]

I don't have full access to the article, but the abstract says they discuss some of the factors leading to the high rates. Your comment on human medicine specialization leads me to think that if a vet has performed more anesthesias then probably they'll have a higher success rate in the future. I also wonder if the pets requiring anesthesia are further advanced in diseases than the humans requiring anesthesia - specifically I think that pets' diseases are probably caught later than humans, so if the pet has poor health going into the procedure, then it's unsurprising they'd have a higher rate of complications than humans would.

I don't plan on taking Kappa out without a harness; if I did microchipping would be a must.

Where I find it uncertain is when a procedure is not required to save the bird's life, and requires anesthesia. For example, someone on parrot_lovers recently chose to have a procedure done on her bird that required anesthesia, where the other option was lifelong antibiotics twice a day. If there was a 1 in 1,000 risk of death from the surgery, or just lifelong inconvenience (and potential complications, and quality of life issues) from not doing the surgery, which is the better choice? I *think* I would have chosen the same as her, but I'm not sure.