Dental surgery under general anesthesia is often necessary for companion animals with advanced dental disease, requiring careful pain management.
Dental surgery causes acute surgical pain that is entirely manageable with appropriate analgesic protocols. The welfare benefit — relief from chronic dental disease pain — almost always outweighs the short-term procedural discomfort. Inadequate post-operative pain management causes unnecessary suffering that owners and veterinarians can prevent. The dramatic behavioral improvements many animals show after dental treatment reveal how much they were suffering before.