Benefits of bloodwork

Benefits of bloodwork


During your pet’s wellness exam, do your eyes glaze over when your veterinarian recommends bloodwork? After all, isn’t that just for sick pets?

Sure, that’s one reason. Results of blood tests can help narrow down a list of tentative diagnoses that a veterinarian creates after reviewing the history and examining a sick animal.

But there are lots of other reasons for blood testing. Before surgery, a veterinarian might want to see if a pet’s organs are functioning well enough to deal with pre-medications, sedatives and anesthetic gases.

Bloodwork is also a way of monitoring the effects of treatment. In addition, blood tests can measure drug levels in the body.

Finally, bloodwork is great at detecting abnormalities before they’re obvious on examination — even in pets that seem perfectly fine. That’s especially important as our pets age.

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