Anesthesia-related mortality has been an intensively discussed topic in veterinary and human medicine over the decades, and will remain a major concern for safety and quality of care. Advances in technology and veterinary anesthesia techniques have led to a more sophisticated approach in peri-anesthetic monitoring of companion animals. In dogs, anesthesia-related mortality rates range from 0.009% to 1.29%, whereas in cats the reported mortality rates lie between 0.05% and 2.2%. Nevertheless, in human medicine, anesthesia-related mortality rates reported among recent studies are far lower.
A study in the United Kingdom with a large population of patients (98,036 dogs) reported that institutions had a peri-anesthetic mortality rate of 0.29% compared to private clinics, which had a lower mortality rate of 0.15%.
What is the time of anesthesia-related death occurrence post operatively?
Do cats have higher anesthesia-related mortality rates than dogs?
What is the success rate of CPR in cardiac arrest during anaesthesia?
Which other factors apart from cardiorespiratory are associated with cardiac arrest during anaesthesia?
What is the role of anaesthetic drugs in mortality rates?