Animal Welfare Professionals

This message was posted by a user wishing to remain anonymous

Hello,

We recently received a dental attachment for or new surgery table, and we are looking at incorporating dental care into our services. This would be totally new for us, as we are a small rural shelter. If anyone has experience preforming/hosting dental surgeries and cleanings in a shelter environment, please give me some advice! Thanks so much.

Some general questions:

What did it take to set up your program?

What equipment is absolutely necessary?

Do you focus only on the shelter animals, or do you extend the service to the public?

#AccesstoCare
#CommunityPartnerships*
#Medicine,SurgeryandSterilization
#PetSupportServices*

There was a fantastic presentation at the shelter medicine conference on the concept of offering low-cost dental care.  It is really worth checking out.

The traditional approach to dental care has been that in addition to a full blood panel a full set of xrays is a prerequisite to any dental work.  This makes any kind of attempt to set up a low-cost high volume dental program impossible.

The panel discussed research about the degree to which foregoing X-rays actually increased risk and my takeaway was that it did not materially do so and that the benefits of clean teeth far outweighed them.

But you may face an uphill battle convincing your medical community.

I work in Mexico where we have a very different landscape and the veterinarians are permitted to be far less risk averse.  We do low-cost cleanings as part of our community service and we would love to set up a high-volume low-cost dental clinic like we do with spay and neuter but we aren't there yet, still snowed under trying to get people to spay and neuter their pets.

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Ursula Hendel
Founder
Granos de Arena
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I'm a vet who likes dentistry, does a lot of it, and has pursued a lot of continuing education on the topic.  I am toying with setting up a small dental room in one or another of our local shelters.   Prices for basic dental services are out of control and waits are too long.  I won't be able to look in the mirror if adoptable animals are passed up because of prohibitive costs of care.  To begin, when you say you have an attachment for your surgery table, what exactly is that attachment?

Dave

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Dave Murakowski
Veterinarian
Wildcat Valley Animal Clinic
IN
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