NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Jon Austin, DVM, with Hutchinson Small Animal Hospital, explained that the veterinary tranquilizer Xylazine that is now being found mixed with fentanyl in some human overdose cases has long been in use in practice on animals.
"It's a medication that's been around a long time," Austin said. "It's very, very helpful and has a good purpose in veterinary medicine. It's used both in large animal and in small animal, for longer term injectable anesthesia. It's put in combination with other medications to make it an anesthetic. It acts more as a tranquilizer or sedative by itself. It's a very potent drug. Its effect is long lasting."
It's especially important for large animals like cows and horses when you can't take an operating room out to the pasture.
"A small amount of it in a needle will put a 1500 pound animal on their heels for long enough to do surgery procedures," Austin said. "I use it frequently in combination with another one called ketamine to do painful surgeries on cats. They will sleep an hour through an active surgery procedure and then they will be groggy and with good pain relief, good analgesia and sedation for five or six more hours."
Austin's concern is the off label usage of the drug by humans may eventually make it unavailable to vets.
"When people start doing things they shouldn't with things, oftentimes the solution for the government is just to take it away," Austin said. "Then, we're left without something to give that kind of help to us for procedures and things we need to do on our pets. I cannot imagine what recreational purpose someone might have for that medication, unless being unconscious and knocked out for hours is what they are looking for. I don't know. I don't understand that, myself."
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