Emergency Critical Care

Aggressive Analgesia

Analgesia is the relief from pain. Pain can be difficult to assess in animals due to their inability to communicate directly about what they are experiencing. Instead, we must rely on indirect signs of pain. It is safe to assume that anything painful to a person is also painful to an animal. It is ideal for analgesia to be administered preemptively, or before, instead of waiting until after clinical signs of pain are observed. Analgesia is most often achieved pharmacologically, or with drugs.

Epidural Injection
When deemed appropriate, a doctor at the VCA Milwaukee Emergency Center for Animals may administer a type of anesthesia called epidural injection. You may know a mother who delivered her child using this procedure. Similar to what she underwent, your animal would receive an injection into what is known as the epidural space. The epidural space is the space surrounding the spinal cord and nerves that come off directly from the spinal cord.

This completely eliminates sensation in the parts of the body that are below the injection point of the spinal column - without providing anesthesia to the parts above that point.