Intensive Care

Critical-care medicine is a relatively new but increasingly important medical specialty which involves many areas including pulmonary medicine, cardiology, infectious disease, and nephrology.

American & European specialist veterinary critical care societies exist to improve the knowledge of this discipline in pets - some of the areas they suggest require this kind of care are listed below.
 

• Dogs and cats that need specialized nutritional support because they are unwilling or unable to eat on their own
• Any patient that is in shock (signs of shock can include weakness, pale mucous membranes in their mouth, cold extremities, and an abnormal heart rate)
• Animals that are having trouble urinating, or are not producing urine
• Trauma patients, including those hit by cars, bite, bullet, knife or burn injuries
• Animals with life-threatening neurologic disease such as coma or severe seizures that are not responding to medications
• Patients that have had surgery and are not recovering well from anaesthesia or are having trouble in the first few post-operative days
• Animals in which an abnormal heart rhythm is causing problems
• Any animal that is having trouble breathing
• Animals that need a blood transfusion

In our hospital the term relates mainly to pets who have suffered trauma related to a car accident or a fight, those with heart and breathing problems, or sometime related to serious infectious diseases.

We are proud of our ICU facilities here at Wood Street Vet Hospital. ICU care is a growing field in Veterinary medicine and we believe that our clients are best served by providing our own emergency service rather than sending our clients to another practice.

As a Veterinary Hospital we have a vet on call and at least one nurse on the premises 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. 

We have specialised facilities here at Wood Street which enable us to provide excellent ICU care for your pet. All our nurses and vets undergo special training for emergency work. If you have an emergency with your pet, we guarantee you will be seen as a priority. We ask all clients to call us if they are bringing their pet as an emergency- even a few minutes of forewarning can help immensely.

When you call, we start to get equipment and materials ready for your pet prior to arrival. A drip with emergency medications and oxygen supplementation is kept ready just in case. The pet’s information is added onto the X-ray and Ultrasound database. The blood machines are warmed up ready for immediate use and emergency drugs like adrenaline are taken out and drawn up for the pet if needed.

Our facilities for emergency cases include oxygen supplementation (using an oxygen generator and oxygen kennels/cages), the ability to measure blood pressures (using both invasive arterial and central venous pressure measurement as well as indirect blood pressure measurement), multi parameter monitors (to give information on heart electrical activity, blood oxygenation, etc),a blood gas machine, and coagulation analyser amongst many others.

Most of these tools are found only in a handful of first opinion/general practice environments and reflect a significant investment on our part into caring for your pet when they need us the most.

These advanced monitoring tools along with specialised skills and a fully stocked pharmacy allow our Veterinary Surgeons to swiftly diagnose and treat your pet’s serious illness.