You may have been told that your cat needs a dental – understandable! but why do they cost so much? Surely it can’t be that hard, right? We thought we’d put together some information to help you understand what happens, and how our practice deals with the issues.
The tricky part about dentals in cats is that you don’t know how much pathology you have until you do an exam under anaesthesia and take x-rays. Cats can get various things, including:
- Fractured tooth roots
- Resorptive lesions, where the body is essentially trying to resorb the tooth
- Infections, either on top of or underneath the tooth
- Calculus and tartar can hide various disease processes
- Various other diseases that may not be apparent until x-rays are performed.
We have two main options for how to proceed if your cat has had a dental exam under anaesthesia recommended.
Option A: Complete treatment in a single procedure
With this option, we expect all treatment to be done at once. We usually give a wide price range from $550 to $1,700, which covers the eventuality that some teeth may need removing. If we know that a couple of large teeth need removing, the cat usually needs to stay in for a couple of days on extra pain medication. This is because we often need to drill through bone to make a window to make sure we get all the root out. We then make a flap in the gum, which requires suturing, and we need to ensure the cat is comfortable afterwards.
We usually schedule a post-op check around 2-3 weeks after we take large teeth out to check the flap. The sutures are dissolvable to don’t need removing. It is important to feed soft food only during that time, then usually given the all clear to have biscuits after the recheck.
The procedure involves:
- A discussion on whether you want to run pre-anaesthetic bloods to ensure it is safe for the anaesthesia (extra cost, around $250- $300 depending on what needs running). If it turns out that your cat is losing weight, or has some other red flags for us during the exam, we may recommend running a more complete series of tests for more subtle underlying disease. Cats often eat and maintain weight well despite quite significant dental disease.
- A thorough clinical exam beforehand.
- General anaesthetic with an endotracheal tube placed to protect the airway.
- A thorough oral exam, including probing for any holes or lesions, and around the tongue and larynx to create a full mouth map.
- A scale and polish, much like when you go to the dental hygienist.
- Full mouth x-rays to see what is happening below the tooth surface.
- Proceeding to any extractions as required. They normally have a dental local anaesthetic block for whichever quadrant of the mouth we are performing extractions on. This means we can operate at a lower plane of anaesthesia – safer for the patient – and also provides pain relief for the immediate post operative period. We do xrays after the extractions to make sure we are happy with them.
We usually offer soft food as soon as they are conscious enough to do, and it’s remarkable how much the usually scoff!
The advantage of this option is that it is a single anaesthetic event, and everything gets done at once. The disadvantage is that it is hard for us to give you an accurate estimate because we will not know the full extent of the work until we are in there. It is also trickier for us to schedule because we need to allow potentially several hours for the procedure and ensure we have scheduled the right amount of time for the cat’s hospital stay. This usually means a longer wait for a space on our waiting list.
We usually do the Option A dentals on a Tuesday, to allow 2 to 3 days of managed pain relief with us in the clinic.
Option B: Staged procedure (initial assessment followed by treatment)
The second option is that your cat comes in just for an anaesthetic, a scale and polish, and x-rays. This is more like seeing your dentist for an assessment of what needs to be done.
The initial procedure involves:
- A discussion on whether you want pre-anaesthetic bloods (extra cost, around $250- $300 depending on what needs running). Once agaain, if it turns out that your cat is losing weight, or has some other red flags for us during the exam, we may recommend running a more complete series of tests for more subtle underlying disease. Cats often eat and maintain weight well despite quite significant dental disease.
- A clinical exam beforehand.
- General anaesthetic with intubation to protect the trachea and lungs.
- A scale and polish.
- A thorough oral exam, including probing for any holes or lesions, and around the tongue and larynx to create a full mouth map.
- Full mouth dental x-rays.
- We create a dental chart to identify which teeth require extraction (e.g., the upper left premolar needs removing). We accept that this will be performed during a separate anaesthetic event, which we can then reschedule for a different time.
Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised and find that the pathology is not as bad as we were thinking. What we thought was going to be a big dental with lots of teeth to be removed turns out to be a scale and polish, with follow-up at-home dental care needed (for example, transitioning to dental biscuits).
If it turns out extractions are needed, we usually tell people that if they are able to come in within the next 3 months following the initial event, we do not need to repeat the full mouth x-rays (though we still take x-rays after the extraction is performed). This means you do not have to pay for full mouth x-rays again, unless other pathology occurs in the meantime (e.g., jaw fractures or issues with a separate tooth). After that 3-month period, you will need to do the full mouth x-rays again to start the dental process.
The nice thing about this second option is that with the first anaesthetic event and mapping completed, we can accurately schedule the time, pain relief, dental blocks, and hospital care needed for the extraction procedure. This also allows for better budgeting and provides a clearer expectation of the at-home care required afterwards.
At the moment, we are offering the anaesthesia, scale and polish, and x-rays for a standard price of $550. This is a reduced price as we are trying to get started on these dentals so we can work out how much we actually have to do going forward. It’s usually faster for us to get these booked in as well, as they do not take as long.
Many cats require regular dentals to maintain their oral health, much like ourselves and the dentist. We prefer to do regular scale and polishes, which sometimes mean we can avoid having to proceed to extractions.
If your cat does need extractions – rest assured, they normally eat better with no teeth, than they did with painful teeth. Cats even usually tolerate full mouth extractions well! Though of course we are trying to avoid it getting to that.
