We have all heard some of the reasons onychectomy is evil:
- It as a barbaric as cutting people’s knuckles off. Cats end up miserably painful and unable to walk and jump for the rest of their lives. .
- No reasonable cat would willingly choose to have the procedure done. .
- Vets have only gone to school for, like, 20 years or so, and are obviously incapable of making intelligent decisions. Plus, they’re in it for the money. Therefore, politicians, lobbyists and activists should make sound decisions for them.
A ring block is an easy procedure that can provide excellent preoperative pain relief to the distal front limb.
“It is ideal to use a 50/50 mixture of two local anesthetics: a short-acting one such as 2 percent lidocaine or 2 percent mepivacaine and a longer-acting drug such as 0.5 percent bupivacaine,” Dr. Kurt Grimm says.
“It often takes 15 to 30 minutes for bupivacaine to have a complete anesthetic effect. If you use bupivacaine alone, surgery will likely start before the block is effective,” he says. “By combining both drugs, you get rapid onset and longer duration of action.”
It is important to make sure the drugs do not contain epinephrine.
A total of 0.1 to 0.3 ml of the mixture can be injected using a 22 G needle at each site.
The goal is to block distal branches of the radial, ulnar and median nerves.∗
- Radial nerve branches can be palpated on the dorso-medial of the proximal carpus.
- ...
Copyright 2009 BowTie Inc.
Click here to read the rest of this article from Veterinary Practice News
