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Experimental Surgery (experimental + surgery)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	75%

Selected Abstracts

Experimental research and surgery: Why, how, and when?

MICROSURGERY, Issue 4 2001
Antonio Di Cataldo M.D.
Experimental research faces two great problems: the significant reduction of public funding and the firm opposition of the public opinion. The law forbids the use of large animals, so that it is possible to use small animals only, which require microsurgical techniques. However, even a skillful surgeon does not know how to perform microsurgery and has to begin a long and tiring training to master techniques. We think that experimental surgery should play a role because it tests the validity and safety of new surgical techniques and allows special pathophysiological aspects to be studied. Furthermore experimental surgery could represent an essential stage in the training of young surgeons. We should find a balance between observance of the law and respect of the animals and, on the other hand, the role of experimental surgery because we should not forget that its most important aim is the improvement of the health of the humankind. La ricerca sperimentale presenta delle difficoltà che dipendono in gran parte dalla scarsezza dei fondi ad essa destinati e dalla latente ostilità dell'opinione pubblica. Le leggi hanno ormai praticamente abolito la possibilità di utilizzare animali di grossa taglia per cui si possono impiegare solo piccoli animali, con la necessità di ricorrere a tecniche microchirurgiche, che non sono patrimonio di tutti i chirurghi, per cui per acquisirle bisogna sottoporsi a lunghi ed estenuanti tirocinii. Noi riteniamo che alla chirurgia sperimentale debba essere riconosciuto un suo ruolo per le possibilità che essa fornisce di saggiare la validità di nuove tecniche chirurgiche, di studiare particolari aspetti di fisiopatologia e di consentire un adeguato training dei giovani chirurghi. Sarebbe forse più giusto trovare un migliore equilibrio tra l'osservanza delle leggi ed il rispetto degli animali da un lato e la giusta collocazione della chirurgia sperimentale dall'altro, non dimenticando che quest'ultima ha come scopo unico ed esclusivo il miglioramento della salute dell'uomo. © 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc. MICROSURGERY 21:118,120 2001 [source]

Large Interarcuate Spaces in the Cervical Vertebral Column of the Tyrolean Mountain Sheep

ANATOMIA, HISTOLOGIA, EMBRYOLOGIA, Issue 1 2003
E. Turkof
Summary Large interarcual spaces have been described between the arcus vertebrae C5/C6 and C6/C7 in the cervical vertebral column of Nubian goats. This aperture enables direct access to spinal cord and rootlets without the need to perform a hemilaminectomy. The present study was performed in order to determine whether these large interarcual spaces can also be found in the vertebral column of the Tyrolean mountain sheep, as this small ruminant, which is anatomically very similar to the Nubian goat, is frequently used for experimental purposes at the Surgical University Clinic in Austria. The carcasses of 10 sheep (six females, four males; range of age: 2.5,6 years, range of weight: 52,89 kg) were dissected and the vertebral column was exposed. All 10 sheep showed elliptic openings between the fourth cervical and the first thoracal vertebrae. Three sheep had additional openings between the first and the second thoracal vertebrae. All openings were covered solitarily by the ligamentum flavum and under this ligamentum lay the spinal cord without any further osseous or ligamentous protection. These findings are not mentioned in the common textbooks of veterinary anatomy and deserve attention, as they can be a step forward towards non-traumatic experimental surgery on the spinal cord. [source]

A Pressure-controlled Rat Ventilator With Electronically Preset Respirations

ARTIFICIAL ORGANS, Issue 12 2006
Valentin L. Ordodi
Abstract:, Major experimental surgery on laboratory animals requires adequate anesthesia and ventilation to keep the animal alive throughout the procedure. A ventilator is a machine that helps the anesthesized animal breathe through an endotracheal tube by pumping a volume of gas (oxygen, air, or other gaseous mixtures), comparable with the normal tidal volume, into the animal's lungs. There are two main categories of ventilators for small laboratory rodents: volume-controlled and pressure-controlled ones. The volume-controlled ventilator injects a preset volume into the animal's lungs, no matter the airways' resistance (with the peak inspiratory pressure allowed to vary), while the pressure ventilator controls the inspiratory pressure and allows the inspiratory volume to vary. Here we show a rat pressure ventilator with a simple expiratory valve that allows gas delivery through electronic expiration control and offers easy pressure monitoring and frequency change during ventilation. [source]

Gynaecological surgery from art and craft to science?

AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNAECOLOGY, Issue 2 2009
Neil Philip JOHNSON
Randomised controlled trials are applied more readily to medical than surgical interventions. There are even more barriers to randomised trials of surgical interventions than to other randomised trials. These include reluctance among surgeons to undertake trials (owing to concern over expressing equipoise, surgical training and surgical learning curve issues, restrictions of funding and time for research, even financial conflict of interest), reluctance of patients to participate in surgical trials owing to fears over ,experimental surgery', failure of randomised trials to detect rare surgical complications and the almost universal failure of those conducting surgical trials to examine important long-term outcomes. Rapid advances in surgical fields mean that new surgical techniques are rapidly superseded and clinical questions surrounding new techniques may linger only until the next new technique becomes available. Nonetheless randomised controlled trials remain the cornerstone of evaluating the effectiveness of surgical interventions. Genuine progress has been made in this field. However, large multicentre collaborative randomised trials that have been prospectively defined in trial registries will be required in the future to answer the important clinical questions regarding gynaecological surgical interventions. [source]