Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Sedation of Small Mammals

Anesthesia, sedation and analgesia in small mammals is a rapidly advancing field, which plays a key role in ensuring animal welfare in these species. Anesthesia in small mammals is generally more challenging compared to dogs and cats, due to the small size of the animals, limited intravascular and airway access options and the tendency of many small mammals to hide clinical signs related to underlying diseases. Sedation is increasingly used in small mammals to decrease the stress response secondary to manual restraint and to facilitate a variety of clinical procedures, such as diagnostic imaging. Sedation can frequently be used instead of general anesthesia. Assessing pain can be challenging in small mammal prey species, such as rabbits and rodents. In addition, for many potentially analgesic drugs the efficacy and safety has not been demonstrated in even more common small mammal species.