My how far we have come

Having practiced for over a quarter of a century now, I look back at how things were then and how things are now. We have always tried to keep up with our ability to provide the best care for our pets and yours. The technological age has enabled us to do things that I never thought we could do in private practice. Back in the day, our lab consisted of a microscope, centrifuge and a refractometer. Today we have a full lab with chemistry analyzers , laser blood analyzers, digital urine test analyzers among a few other high tech gadgets. All these things help us to diagnose what our pets can’t tell us.

Our surgery room is a lot different than it was a quarter century ago also. We now have digital surgery monitors that give us heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, blood carbon dioxide levels and temperature in real time so we can know if our patients are in trouble. These tools enable us to react quicker to problems that are inherent with performing surgery and anesthesia on animals. Another big advancement is the surgical laser that we use for many of our surgeries. The laser reduces bleeding during surgery and also greatly reduces post operative pain. All of these devices are a big change from the stethoscope, thermometer and scalpel blade. 

Our newest technology addition is digital dental radiography to complement our whole body digital radiography unit. The whole body unit allows us to rapidly take high quality images of the inside of our patients. What use to take 5-10 minutes per image now takes 5-10 seconds. Our digital dental unit enables us to see with great detail the tooth and bony detail in our patients mouths like never before. Now we can see why our pets have tooth aches like we never could before with the naked eye or magnifying lenses. We can tell better if a tooth should be pulled or if we can fix it. It is so much better to be able to know it there is a problem than guess or assume what is there. 

I could go on more about how much things have changed but the main point I want to make is that I am glad that we can do so much more today than we could do before to keep our pets healthy and happy. I am so grateful to live in the technology age that we do. I look forward to what the future will bring for us to continue to make our lives and our pets lives better. 

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