The aim of this study is to report the incidence of surgical anesthetic deaths during an 11-year period (1996 to 2006), because during these years, no complementary or laboratorial exams were realized previously to the anesthetic procedure. A retrospective study was carried out, evaluating the anesthetic records used during the anesthetic procedures at the Veterinary Clinical Hospital/Santa Catarina State University. A total of 7012 anesthetic procedures were evaluated, from which 5500 (78.4%) performed in dogs and 1512 (21.6%) in cats, submitted to general anesthesia. The deaths included in this study occurred during the trans-anesthetic or immediate postoperative period. The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification, patients' age, sex or the surgical procedure accomplished were not taken in consideration. All the animals were submitted to the anesthetic-surgical procedures only with pre-anesthetic clinical evaluation, with no previous complementary data, and they were monitored in the trans-anesthetic period based on clinical anesthesia. In this period, 63 deaths were observed during the anesthetic period, from these, 49 in dogs (77.8%) and 14 in cats (22.2%). The mortality rate observed in dogs was 0.89% and in cats, 0.92%. In conclusion, the anesthetic protocol with higher mortality rate in dogs was the association atropine, xylazine, thiopental and halothane (20.4%), with no protocol specially related to this rate in cats. The drugs associated with larger mortality rate were diazepam, etomidate and isoflurane for dogs and cats, when analyzed individually.
causes of death; anesthesia; dogs; cats
