Anesthesia Service
About the Service
Our patient care mission is to provide safe, effective, comprehensive general anesthesia and acute pain management for all patients requiring surgery or diagnostic procedures. Our team’s sole responsibility is ensuring the well-being and comfort of your pet while under our care. We provide this service 24/7 when general anesthesia is required.
What We Do
Our focus is the management of patients with significant disease or those presented for complex procedures that would pose an unacceptable risk in a general veterinary practice. We provide an additional level of care that is not possible in other facilities. Each patient has a minimum of a two-person anesthesia team whose sole responsibility is monitoring and maintaining a safe and effective level of anesthesia. All vital signs are continuously monitored and therapy is instituted as needed. At a minimum, every patient is monitored for heart rhythm, pulse rate, breath rate, temperature, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and carbon dioxide production. Every patient is provided supplemental warming as needed to avoid hypothermia, a common complication under general anesthesia.
We provide pain control for all patients undergoing surgery and aggressively treat any indications of pain during the procedure so that your pet wakes up pain free. We utilize the latest techniques in regional anesthesia such as epidurals, electrical-stimulation guided brachial plexus blocks and dental blocks. We use the same injectable pain medicines as you would find in a human hospital, such as morphine, fentanyl, and dexmedetomidine (Precedex®).
We utilize specialized anesthesia equipment unavailable in other facilities. We can conduct direct arterial blood pressure monitoring, central venous pressure monitoring, neuromuscular paralysis and monitoring and mechanical ventilation. We can provide constant rate infusions of general anesthetics, pain medicines, and cardiovascular support drugs with an array of highly accurate infusion pumps. We have access to a variety of blood products if a transfusion is necessary. We are able to fully monitor patients undergoing magnetic resonance imaging.
Who We Are
The Anesthesia Service is composed of two veterinarians and six veterinary anesthetists who are dedicated to providing anesthesia and pain management for your pet. Both of the veterinarians are diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia and have a combined experience of more than 30 years in the specialty. Each of the veterinary anesthetists has a special interest in anesthesia and providing anesthesia is their only responsibility.
Monica Midon, DVM, Ma Dr. Midon received her DVM from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS (Brazil) in 2012. She completed an Anesthesiology Residency at Universidade Estadual Paulista – Unesp Botucatu (Brazil) in 2015, and received her Master of Surgery degree from the Universidade Estadual Paulista – Unesp Jaboticabal (Brazil) in 2017. Email: mailto:mzm0204@auburn.edu |
Noelia Diaz, DVM
Email: nzd0022@auburn.edu |
Hisashi Sakata, VBSc, PhD
Email: hzs0099@auburn.edu |
Dr. Katharine McIver, DVM, MPH
Email: kam0174@auburn.edu |
Dr. Noelia Diaz received her DMV from Cordoba University in Spain in 2012. After graduating she completed an equine rotating internship, at Fethard Equine Hospital, Ireland, and following this, she finished an internship in small animal anesthesia at Pride Veterinary Hospital, UK.
Dr. Sakata received his BVSc degree from Rakuno Gakuen University (Japan) in 2014. After several years of working experience in Japan, he completed an anesthesia internship at Massey University (New Zealand) in 2018 and received his PhD degree from Rakuno Gakuen University in 2019.
Dr. Katharine McIver received her DVM from Kansas State University in 2019. After graduation, she completed a small animal rotating internship at Auburn University. Dr. McIver has also received her MPH from KSU in 2021.
