Acetaminophen is toxic to cats, so this video is about the use of acetaminophen in dogs only. NEVER give acetaminophen to a cat.
Hello this video is about the use of acetaminophen as part of the of pain control management for dogs let me be very clear that acetaminophen should never be given to a cat a single dose of acetaminophen can put a cat into fatal liver failure so acetaminophen should never be given to a cat dogs on the other hand can tolerated now acetaminophen which goes under
The brand name of tylenol and then is also available as a number of generic brands it’s not my preferred pain control drug but there are circumstances where we can’t use meloxicam which is the one i would go to as my first choice such as if your dog is on steroids or has had a negative reaction to meloxicam in the past so if we’re suggesting the use of tylenol or
Acetaminophen it’s because we’ve deemed meloxicam to be inappropriate for your dog now the other thing to be aware of is that tylenol brand and many of the generics come as combination drugs so tylenol for back pain or tylenol sinus and cold and so forth and all of these have other ingredients whether it’s muscle relaxants or caffeine or decongestants so if we’re
Going to be using acetaminophen for your dog’s post-operative pain management i want you to be certain that what you’re using is straight acetaminophen but it has no other active ingredients no muscle relaxants no decongestants no caffeine nothing else just plain straight acetaminophen now the dose for dogs is 10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight every 12
Hours in humans it’s much more frequent than that putting dogs were going every 12 hours no more than two doses per day and the dough should be as close to the 10 milligrams per kilogram as we can get it although there is some leeway there one of the challenges with using acetaminophen is it doesn’t come in a wide variety of sizes we have a few options to choose
From but it may be difficult to dose just the right amount for instance the tylenol brand in the regular strength is 32 and a half milligrams which be good for a 32 and a half kilogram dog or say roughly a 30 to 35 kilogram dog and those tablets are around an unscored so they would be very difficult to break in half if we had a 15 kilogram dog if we only wanted
To give half a pill it would be hard to break those 325’s down the middle the extra strength tablets are 500 milligrams which would be good for a 50 kilogram dog now in some of the generic brands they are as an elongated caplet and it might be easier for you to break those in half so now we have 250 milligrams per half good for a 25 kilogram dog the children’s
Strengths of chewable tablets are let me just recheck my dose here the children’s strengths are my glasses for a second here children’s strengths chewable tablets are a hundred and sixty milligrams so good for a 16 kilogram dog they’re scored so they can be broken in half we get down to 80 milligrams good for an 8 kilogram dog but they’re quick dissolved so we’ve
Got to make sure that and get them down quickly so that they don’t dissolve in the mouth and the dog foam and spit some of it out one other option is the children’s liquid which comes as 160 milligrams per 5 milliliters or 32 milligrams per ml so in 1 cc or one milliliter that’s good for a 3.2 kilogram dog and we can scale up from that but giving liquid medication
Can be troublesome particularly when one of the main instructions that you’re going to have for your pet if it’s had oral surgery is i do not want you touching the mouth at all for two weeks so all medications must be hidden in something that your pet will eat voluntarily with a tablet or a portion of a tablet we would have you hide the pill in something that
Your dog enjoys whether it’s a bit of peanut butter or cream cheese or a piece of a wiener bury it in a bit of bread and put some cheese or something enticing on the bread something that your dog will take voluntarily from your hand and swallow whole or with minimal chewing when it comes to using the liquid the children’s liquid you could squirt a small amount
Of it onto a bit of bread let it soak into the bread and give them that as a treat and again if you need to make the bread more enticing feel free to add some peanut butter or cream cheese or something like that onto the bread as an incentive for them to eat it so there there are various tricks and methods to get around the dosing but if we have any questions or
Concerns then we may need to talk on the phone and and discuss how we’re going to get the right dose for your animal one other precaution though with the children’s both the tablets that you old tablets and the liquid they come in various flavors and i was looking at the ingredients and it didn’t say specifically but we know that some dogs cannot tolerate grapes
That grapes should never be given to dogs it’s it’s not all dogs but some dogs if they get even a single grape it can put them into fatal kidney failure and so i would avoid any product designed for humans that is great flavored chances are the flavor is artificial but just in case and and we don’t know what it is in grapes that causes this toxicity to some dogs
But just to be on the safe side don’t use grape flavored products at all so in in many instances we’ll have given the first dose prior to discharging your pet and we’ll give you instructions on when to give the second dose and then after that it’s morning and evening for four more days depending on the size of your animal we may not have had the correct dose in
Hospital so you may have to give the first dose as soon as you get home but again as with all medications we can discuss the specifics about your pet and if you have any questions or concerns please get in touch with us before doing anything else to make sure that we get this right okay thank you very much you
Transcribed from video
Acetaminophen for post-operative pain control in dogs. By Fraser Hale
