01/06/2026
A case for Pre-Anaesthetic Blood Testing 🩸
Roxy, an 11-year-old Border Collie, was scheduled for a dental cleaning after her owners noticed she had smelly breath. During our pre-surgery checks, Dr Shey noticed that her teeth were in pretty good condition and shouldn't be causing any odour. After performing a pre-anaesthetic blood test, commonly used before an animal has surgery to check their organ function and health, Roxy's results came back showing high inflammation markers, suggesting something else was going on!
🔎With the clues coming together, we performed a urine analysis, which showed that the inflammation in Roxy's body was, unfortunately, a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). A common symptom of a UTI is incontinence and bladder leakage, but with Roxy's long coat, the leaking wasn't obvious. As Roxy did her best to clean herself up and soothe the irritation from the urine on her skin, she developed the bad breath, which was assumed to be coming from her teeth!
Now on treatment for her UTI, Roxy should be feeling much better soon, and her breath, whilst maybe not minty fresh, will return to normal. Without the pre-anaesthetic checks and testing, Roxy's painful UTI may have gone untreated, and she would have gone through an unnecessary anaesthetic procedure.
When your pet comes in for treatment or surgery, we may offer to perform blood testing for just this reason - to ensure we fully understand your pet's health so we can treat them properly. If you have any questions about diagnostic testing for your pet, please ask us or give us a call on 9845 2245 ☎
