Dental surgery under general anaesthesia is frequently required for companion animals with dental disease, with welfare considerations spanning pain management, anaesthetic safety, and post-operative care.
Dental surgery welfare involves the interplay of anaesthetic risk and the benefit of resolving chronic pain: an animal in dental pain suffers continuously and silently; surgery under anaesthesia imposes acute risk but resolves the underlying chronic welfare problem. Modern veterinary anaesthesia has dramatically reduced anaesthetic risk, and pre-operative assessment identifies individuals where risk management is essential. Post-operative analgesia prevents pain during recovery. The welfare case for timely dental treatment outweighs anaesthetic risk in most healthy patients — delay allows chronic pain to persist unnecessarily.