We are now requiring that all patients receive oral calming medications prior to imaging appointments unless contraindicated for your individual patient.
We have found oral calming medications significantly improve our patients’ comfort while lowering respiratory and heart rate. Increased anxiety and heart rate is detrimental to the pet mentally but also physically, especially with heart disease. In addition, if the patient is unable to hold still enough for imaging, we are not able to complete the study. We suggest Gabapentin for cats and a combination of trazodone and gabapentin for dogs be administered PO the evening before and two hours prior to travel.
Our recommended doses are:
Cats: 100-200 mg Gabapentin both the night before the appointment and again 2 hours prior to the appointment time.
(100 mg is generally sufficient for the calmer cats, but we find our spicier cats do better with 200-300 mg.)
Dogs: 20-25 mg/kg Gabapentin and 7.5 -12mg/kg Trazodone (the higher end of the dose is necessary for those with high fear or anxiety).
If you feel these medications will not be tolerated based on your patient’s comorbidities, please let us know. Higher doses of oral sedation are preferred due to safety – additional medications we may provide if oral premedication is insufficient include Butorphanol, Alfaxalone, and/or Dexmedetomidine.
Please reach out if you have any questions or need assistance with referring a case. Thank you for entrusting us with your patient’s care.
