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| Our own Mr. B is 10 months old. His teeth are pretty good, but he already has a tiny bit of buildup on his upper premolar. |
Most people do not realize that the quality of dental care
can vary from veterinary hospital to veterinary hospital. Contacting a
veterinary hospital and asking what they charge for teeth cleaning may not give
you the whole picture. Many veterinary hospitals will tell you that they cannot give you a good estimate for a dental procedure before examining your cat, and there is good reason. As a rule, until a veterinarian performs an exam under anesthesia, we do not have the whole picture of the cat’s oral health and can only offer a
range of possibilities, not an exact quote. Often, the
whole picture does not emerge until after dental x-rays are taken.
At Exclusively Cats Veterinary Hospital, we take pride
in the quality of our care and are happy to discuss treatment plans with you,
making sure that you have a clear understanding of exactly what fees and
services you are paying for.
As an educated pet owner, there are questions that you should ask when getting
a quote for dental services:
1. Are there any additional charges associated with a teeth cleaning, such
as labwork, tooth extraction, x-rays, medications or other after-care? The
estimate for treatment that we give you is comprehensive. We even try to
anticipate all the extractions that may be needed. You may want to clarify
whether an estimate for teeth cleaning that you receive elsewhere includes
everything, or whether the clinic you called gave a minimum estimate over the
phone and might add additional charges to the estimate once you are in the
office.
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| Bloodwork is one of the best ways to get information about a cat's health |
2. Will preanesthetic bloodwork be done? We check labwork on each pet
prior to the dental procedure to highlight any health issues that could
compromise the anesthetic procedure. The type and extent of labwork will vary
based on the age and health of the patient, and also may depend on prior
labwork that we have recently evaluated.
3. Will my pet be given IV fluids? An IV catheter allows instant access
to the circulatory system if an emergency situation should arise. Anesthesia
over time will decrease the blood pressure. Fluid therapy supports kidney
function during anesthetic procedures and keeps the blood pressure in a safe
range while your cat is asleep. Any time that a cat is having teeth extracted,
we place an IV catheter. Also, patients of a certain age will routinely receive
IV fluids. If at any time we feel that our dental patient may be a critical
anesthetic risk, we will place an IV as well, for the safety of your pet.
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| Four-handed dentistry! |
4. Who will be performing the procedure and what is their level of training?
Any dental surgical procedure should include a minimum of 4 hands (a
veterinarian and technician). Our most experienced and well-trained technicians
assist the doctor during dental procedures and only our veterinarians perform
extractions. In some cases with highly critical patients, a second or third
technician may be required to ensure the safety of the cat.
Dogs and cats experience dental disease in markedly
different ways. At a practice that sees both dogs and cats, it is common for
the veterinarian’s experience to be primarily canine dentistries, whereas our
veterinarians have 100% of their experience with feline dental procedures.
Since Exclusively Cats Veterinary Hospital opened its doors, our staff members
have performed over 5,000 feline dental cleanings and oral surgeries. There
have been multiple instances in which veterinarians from other hospitals have
called to consult with or ask advice from our doctors about complex or
difficult feline dental cases.
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| Pulse and oxygen monitor |
5. What type of vital signs monitoring will be performed, and who will be
performing the monitoring? Different veterinary hospitals monitor
anesthesia different ways. Our patients’ heart rates, blood pressure and oxygen
delivery are monitored throughout the procedure by a technician. In higher risk
patients, an EKG and blood gas level are also monitored. The entire time that
the veterinarian is working on your cat’s mouth, a technician is by their side,
assisting and monitoring, and in critical risk patients, one or more additional
technicians will be at hand to help ensure the safety of your pet.
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| Dental models and x-rays are used to help explain what happened during the procedure |
6. What kind of discharge information will you receive and from whom? If
your cat has any kind of abnormality observed during the dentistry, the dental
technician will discuss the dental x-rays and findings with you at the time of
the discharge appointment.
7. What type of anesthesia will be used? We use isoflurane gas
anesthesia for our dental patients. Isoflurane is an extremely safe anesthesia
–the gas begins to leave the system as soon as the cat exhales for the first
time after the gas is turned off. Some injectable anesthetics remain in the
system for hours after use, with no way to counteract it if there is an
emergency. Each patient has a breathing tube inserted into their trachea to
keep water from entering the lungs during the dental procedure. Each cat is
given a pre-surgical sedative to help decrease the amount of anesthesia needed
and increase safety. We had a client report to us that they were changing
veterinarians because their 4-year-old cat died under anesthesia while having a
dental procedure performed elsewhere. At Exclusively Cats Veterinary Hospital,
we have never lost a patient under anesthesia for dentistry.
8. Will my cat be sleeping on a heated blanket during the procedure? Low
body temperature is a very high risk during dental procedures. Since anesthesia
lowers body temperature and the water from the dental procedure can lower
temperature even more, every dental patient at our hospital is placed between
two warm circulating water blankets to keep their body temperature normal.
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| The tooth on the far right is missing above the gumline but there is still a root remaining |
9. Will dental films be taken and reviewed by a veterinarian?
Considering that 80% of pets over 3 years of age have some degree of dental
disease, most of it below the gumline where it cannot be seen, estimating for
dental care even after examining the mouth is difficult. The real dental exam
happens while the cat is sleeping, once large amounts of tartar have been
removed and each tooth has been probed and x-rayed. In some cases a tooth that
looks healthy or is missing above the gumline may be developing problems at the
root – if we only looked at the part of the tooth that could be seen above the
gum, you might find your cat with a painful abscess within weeks to months
after a thorough tooth cleaning. That is why x-rays are so important. Every
dental procedure that we perform will have dental films taken.
In many cases, we have found areas where tooth remnants have
been left behind by other hospitals where x-rays have not been taken. These
remnants can cause pain, or become infected and cause more serious issues. In
some cases, we have had other veterinarians refer patients to our office for a repeat dentistry within days of having a dental
procedure performed elsewhere. In these cases, we do
invite the referring veterinarian to sit in on the dentistry for educational
purposes.
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| Feline Dental Chart |
10. Will dental charting be done to record the health of the teeth for
future knowledge? This allows us to track changes in each tooth’s health so
that we can take action before there is irreversible disease and the tooth must
be extracted.
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| Cat "cavities" start below the gum instead of at the crown |
11. Will nerve blocks be used if teeth are extracted? Just as your
dentist uses novocaine prior to working on one of your teeth, we use numbing
drugs to reduce post-operative pain in your cat.
12. Will pain medication be given? Anyone who has had a wisdom tooth
extracted knows how painful a tooth extraction can be. We give 2 different pain
medications (a short-acting and then a long-acting) to ease this burden for
your cat.
13. How long will your cat be observed after the dental procedure? At
our hospital, the post-surgical patients are housed in the main treatment area
where they can be observed from the time they are finished with their procedure
until they are discharged. There are a number of instances where we have been
able to make a cat more comfortable after surgery because we have been
monitoring the cat throughout the afternoon, where a cat in a separate kennel
area may not have had the need for additional comfort noted.
14. Will an ultrasonic scaler be used to clean the teeth or manual scaling
techniques or both? Hand scaling (picking off the buildup on the tooth by
hand) is not as effective as ultrasonic scaling to remove buildup on the teeth,
but using an ultrasonic scaler alone could cause tooth damage if large amounts
of buildup are present. We manually remove large chunks of calculus (tartar)
from the teeth first, and then remove the microscopic amounts with the
ultrasonic scaler.
15. Will polish be applied to the teeth after cleaning? Scaling the
teeth leaves behind tiny scratches that become an anchor for buildup to form.
Polishing removes these scratches and smoothes the surface of the tooth so that
it is harder for buildup to gain a foothold.
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| Oravet Barrier Sealant |
16. Will fluoride be applied to the teeth after polishing? Fluoride helps
strengthen the enamel of the tooth as well as adhering to pores in the tooth
that can be painful when exposed to air.
17. Will sealant be applied to the teeth after polishing? We apply
Oravet sealant to the teeth after the procedure to seal the gumline and provide
more resistance to future buildup.
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| Painting the teeth with a protective sealant |
At Exclusively Cats Veterinary Hospital, we do all of these things. We have had
many people report to us that their cats had a change in personality (for the
better!) after we performed a dental treatment for their cat. Some previously
antisocial cats have become more social; some quiet, older cats have had an
increase in energy and a new interest in play.
We recently had a client who chose to take her cats
elsewhere for a surgical procedure in order to save $100. After the procedure was over, she learned that she was not getting the services that she thought she was paying for and had to call our
office several times in the weeks following the procedure to ask questions
about post-surgical complications. She ended up spending that $100 and more
(both at the other hospital and then later at ours) in order to make her cats
feel better.
We take pride in the skill of our staff and the care and
thoughtfulness that we can provide for each patient. It is always your
prerogative to choose where you seek your veterinary care and decide what is
best for your pets. Our ambition is to help you achieve your health goals for
your cats however you allow us to do that.
Many people consider “hair” to be less allergenic than
fur, but hair is not the culprit when it comes to allergies. The real culprits
that stimulate allergic reactions are a number of proteins in a cat’s saliva
and other glands in the body. They are deposited on the surface of the cat as
he grooms and secreted from the sebaceous glands in the skin. These allergens
mix with the surface of the skin and coat, and are then shed into the
environment, naturally. It is true that some breeds that shed less and have
finer hair are less likely to build up allergens within the coat and less
likely to spread as much allergenic material in the environment, but even
Sphynx cats groom themselves and have sebaceous glands, so are not truly
allergy-free! For more information about why people are allergic to cats, stay
tuned for our next blog article!
