Lack of anesthetic means that animal operations are canceled

In the clip above, Gustav Svensson talks about the consequences of the lack of propofol.

The operations that cannot be performed without propofol are complicated thoracic surgery or anesthesia in epilepsy, for example. In those cases, larger amounts of propofol are required to carry out the operations safely.

So far, there are only a few cases in Gothenburg, where operations could not be performed and the animals had to be killed instead.

For some time, the Swedish Medicines Agency has approved that veterinary preparations are also used in the treatment of people.

Propovet, which has the same active substance as propofol, could then be used for respiratory care by people intensive care for covid-19. Therefore, the authority has issued an injunction to the country's veterinarians that they should use the preparation sparingly, should it be needed in human care.

- We have then had to go back to old methods of anesthetizing the animals, says Gustav Svensson.

This means that they must combine several different preparations in order to be able to anesthetize an animal during an operation.

- First, we have used several types of sedative medicines before we have anesthetized the animal. This way we can avoid using as much propofol or not at all.