Veterinary Sedation, Anesthesia, and Analgesia Strategies: An Integrated Approach to Animal Welfare and Quality of Life

Sedation, anesthesia, and analgesia are fundamental components of contemporary veterinary medicine, contributing to procedural safety, pain control, and animal welfare. This narrative review aimed to synthesize current evidence on pharmacological and clinical strategies for sedation, anesthesia, and analgesia in domestic and wild animals, with emphasis on individualized and species-specific ap-proaches. Recent literature addressing pre-anesthetic medication, sedation, balanced anesthesia, multimodal analgesia, pharmacological agents, routes of administration, anesthetic monitoring, recov-ery, and species-specific considerations was reviewed and critically integrated. The evidence indicates that effective anesthetic management requires consideration of physiological, metabolic, behavioral, and pharmacological characteristics, as well as the clinical condition and specific requirements of each patient. Multimodal approaches facilitate nociceptive control and may reduce the requirements for general anesthetic agents, while continuous monitoring supports the early recognition and manage-ment of cardiovascular, respiratory, and thermoregulatory alterations. Appropriate recovery is also essential for minimizing stress, pain, and physiological instability and for promoting a gradual return to normal physiological and behavioral states. Overall, the reviewed evidence supports individualized, multimodal, and continuously monitored anesthetic strategies as fundamental components of contem-porary veterinary practice. These approaches integrate procedural safety, effective pain management, physiological stability, and animal welfare across different species and clinical contexts.