Dental procedures in companion animals require general anesthesia, and concerns about anesthetic risk can lead owners to avoid necessary dental care, creating chronic welfare compromise.
Dental anesthesia avoidance is a welfare problem where appropriate risk perception failure leads to owners choosing chronic dental pain for their pets over a procedure whose risks they overestimate. Modern veterinary anesthesia with appropriate monitoring is extremely safe in healthy patients, and pre-anesthetic screening identifies the small proportion of animals where increased precautions are warranted. Anesthesia-free dental cleaning, marketed to owners who fear general anesthesia, does not allow the subgingival examination and cleaning where periodontal disease actually occurs and causes stress to unsedated animals restrained for oral examination. The welfare comparison is stark: chronic, progressive dental pain versus a brief anesthetic event with appropriately low risk in most patients.