Emergency and Critical Care

Overview

Emergency and critical care is the assessment, stabilisation, investigation and management of patients presenting as emergencies and requiring intensive care to overcome their disease processes.

Any patient may require intensive care at some point during their treatment. At Bristol Veterinary Specialists, we are able to provide a truly multidisciplinary approach to cases, by integrating our experienced emergency and critical care team with our other specialist services to deliver the highest level of care to all our patients.

Medical Emergencies

Many patients with medical conditions can present with sudden-onset conditions (such as acute kidney injury), or can experience an abrupt deterioration due to a more chronic disease (for example neoplasia). Both can result in acutely ill patients needing emergency assessment and stabilisation. Our emergency and critical care department works closely with our internal medicine team, to collaboratively stabilise sick patients, so they may undergo further investigations to diagnose their disease processes and develop suitable treatment plans.

Surgical Emergencies

Critically ill patients presenting with surgical conditions often require aggressive stabilisation before they can be safely anaesthetised, for surgery to be performed. Examples include septic peritonitis, hemoabdomen, GDV, lung lobe torsions and trauma cases. Our emergency and critical care team works closely with our fantastic anaesthesia department, to ensure patients are stabilised both prior to and following surgery.

Surgical patients also frequently require intensive care for several days post-operatively and we have a comprehensive range of equipment to enable our team to provide the highest level of intensive care and constant monitoring for these patients.

We accept a wide range of emergency and critical cases as referrals. Please call us if you have a case needing an immediate referral.