Our in-house laboratory helps us obtain immediate serum chemistry, hematology results, urinalysis, parasite testing, etc. We also utilize commercial veterinary laboratories for specialized diagnostics and consultations.
The hospital laboratory provides a multitude of diagnostic blood panels to better evaluate your pet’s health. These include a hematology complete blood count (CBC), serum biochemistries, and electrolytes. These lab panel results can help identify signs of underlying stress, inflammation, infection, anemia, or other systemic organ dysfunctions (liver, kidneys, pancreas, intestines, etc.). To help ensure safe anesthesia for your pet we’ll run the following tests.
VCA A Plus Animal Hospital Laboratory
Since our pets can’t tell us when they are sick or feeling ill, a pet appearing healthy may disguise symptoms of an ailment or underlying disease. One example is that a pet can lose up to 75% of their renal (kidney) function before exhibiting any visible signs of their illness. Therefore, laboratory testing plays a major role in early detection and intervention in your pet’s annual wellness examination. The recommend blood chemistries, urinalysis, and/or internal parasite fecal testing make valuable information available for the doctors to promote and enhance quality health care for your pet.
These laboratory tests help ascertain a baseline of values which help evaluate your pet’s general health status. If your pet should require any medical treatment or surgery, the lab results will be used in the future to compare with previous lab results to improve the diagnosis. It is important to remember that healthy pets can have varying lab results each and every time they are tested. The doctors take various factors into consideration, such as the pet’s age, weight, stress levels, physical condition, and clinical symptoms when evaluating results.
If your pet is scheduled for any kind of anesthetic procedure associated with general surgery, radiology, or a dental cleaning, the doctors highly recommend pre-anesthetic blood panel screenings. Having these done before the procedure will better define your pet’s hepatic, renal, and cardiovascular system function which is essential to metabolize and excrete the required anesthetic drugs.
