Sedation and chemical restraint in the dog and cat

Small animal patients must often undergo veterinary procedures that are painful or distressful, for which judicious use of sedatives or other agents with anesthetic or analgesic properties can be useful. If the degree of sedation is profound enough, such "chemical restraint" may be employed to provide immobilization for radiographs or minor surgical procedures. The choice of agents to be used will depend upon the physiologic state and cooperative nature of the patient and the desired endpoint, ie, anxiolysis versus deep sedation with analgesia. This report discusses important features of patient assessment, preparation, equipment needs, consideration of the types of procedures for which sedation is useful, and recovery considerations. A brief review is included of the useful effects and contraindications for the various agents employed, and doses for each are listed. Algorithms are presented for a given category of patient, leading the practitioner through a decision making strategy to arrive at examples of sedation or chemical restraint protocols that are commonly found to be effective by the author.