A new report has revealed “excellent” surgical outcomes for cats, dogs and rabbits undergoing neutering across a group’s UK practices.

Data from VetPartners shows 93% of patients experienced no or only minor problems postoperatively in 2024, an improvement on 92.1% in 2021.

The group praised the results, which are included in its first Optimising Surgical Outcomes Report, published by the VetPartners Clinical Board.

Engagement

The outcomes report is part of VetPartners’ wider quality improvement work around surgical outcomes, and it said the work was boosted because of greater engagement in inputting postoperative coding data.

The proportion of procedures coded by teams in 2024 increased by 29% on previous years, and allowed for the collection of data from more than 27,000 coded surgeries.

VetPartners director of clinical research and excellence in practice Rachel Dean said: “We are incredibly proud of the work done across our practices to progress surgical outcomes for routine neutering procedures as it is of great importance to our patients, our clients and our colleagues in practice.”

‘Fantastic results’

Dr Dean added: “We’re delighted to be able to share with our teams the fantastic results they have achieved together, thanks to the care they give to their patients every day and their skills, and there is an opportunity to continue improvement. This data supports our practice teams to understand where they are now and how they could further improve.

“Moving forward, we are aiming to continue this great work across the whole group and also expand the focus beyond neutering to other procedures. This will help us to identify areas where clinical discussions and audit cycles have progressed practice, so we can share it with the whole team.

“We also want to share our work with the wider veterinary profession and pet owning community to generate further discussion and create new partnerships to help more professionals, owners and pets.”

Resources

Clinical teams benefited from new resources form the clinical board, including educational tools on pain scoring and innovative approaches to pain relief, brachycephalic pre oxygenation, drugs to help fearful cats and dogs and promoting stress-free cat visits. The company also supported two projects.

Ash Tree Vets in Leicestershire was able to carry out an audit of local anaesthetic use that led to a reduction in use of greenhouse gases during routine surgical castration and VetPartners’ sustainability and clinical board teams collaborated on an ongoing project on use of disposable drapes versus washable, reusable ones in routine surgeries.

The report can be viewed online.