Laboratory animals
-
The present work determined the minimum alveolar concentrations (MAC) of halothane, isoflurane and sevoflurane in adult female gerbils (n=24). Animals were placed in a chamber for anaesthetic induction before performing tracheal intubation. The tracheal tube was connected to a non-rebreathing circuit with minimal dead space. ⋯ Cardiovascular parameters at 1xMAC did not differ significantly among anaesthetics but the respiratory rate was significantly higher in the halothane group than in the isoflurane and sevoflurane groups. The SpO2 values recorded throughout anaesthesia and the pH and partial oxygen pressure values determined at the end of the study did not differ among the studied anaesthetics at 1xMAC. These data suggest that the MAC for halogenated inhalant anaesthetics in gerbils is lower than the average MAC values obtained in rats and mice.
-
Preface Whenever animals are used in research, minimizing pain and distress and promoting good welfare should be as important an objective as achieving the experimental results. This is important for humanitarian reasons, for good science, for economic reasons and in order to satisfy the broad legal principles in international legislation. It is possible to refine both husbandry and procedures to minimize suffering and improve welfare in a number of ways, and this can be greatly facilitated by ensuring that up-to-date information is readily available. ⋯ It provides a valuable resource to help understand the physical, social and behavioural characteristics and needs of individual primates, and is intended to develop and complement the existing literature and legislative guidelines. Topics covered include refinements in housing, husbandry and common procedures such as restraint, identification and sampling, with comprehensive advice on issues such as primate communication, assessing and facilitating primate wellbeing, establishing and maintaining social groups, environmental and nutritional enrichment and animal passports. The most commonly used species are the key focus of this resource, but its information and recommendations are generally applicable to other species, provided that relevant individual species characteristics are taken into account.
-
Fast recoveries are essential when looking for a safe anaesthetic protocol to use on mice. Propofol is a short-acting anaesthetic agent, which provides a smooth, fast recovery. A recent study carried out in our laboratory showed that the intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration of propofol combined with a fast-acting opioid does not provide a sufficiently stable anaesthesia. ⋯ The combination of propofol and medetomidine provided a predictable induction, hypnosis and muscle relaxation, but surgical anaesthesia (loss of pedal withdrawal reflex) was not achieved. The addition of fentanyl increased analgesia leading to surgical anaesthesia. We concluded that a combination of 75/1/0.2 mg/kg of propofol, medetomidine and fentanyl, respectively, is a safe, easy and reversible technique for i.p. anaesthesia in mice, providing a surgical window of 15 min and restraint for 30 min with a fast recovery.
-
The aim of this study was to find the fastest, easiest and safest method of achieving orotracheal intubation for general anaesthesia in laboratory pigs. Twenty-one Yorkshire x Landrace crossbreed male castrated pigs (32.9 +/- 4.8 kg) were investigated. Dorsal and ventral recumbency are the alternatives most frequently described for animal positioning during intubation procedures. ⋯ Preoxygenation before intubation is vitally important for preventing hypoxia. With regard to clinical practice, the haemodynamic changes observed in this investigation do not appear to be relevant, as the mean arterial pressure was not altered and heart rates only increased moderately. It may be concluded that the ventrodorsal position can be recommended for orotracheal intubation in pigs as the first choice for providing a smooth and fast airway.
-
This study evaluated whether the automated behaviour recognition software 'HomeCageScan' (HCS) could detect behaviour changes and any positive analgesic effects in two mouse strains undergoing vasectomy (C3H/HeNCrl and C57BL/6). Another objective was to test the effectiveness of HCS in differentiating between the effects of each treatment relative to conventional manual analysis. Each control (unoperated) group consisted of four mice of each strain. ⋯ Overall, HCS provided a sufficiently accurate and rapid method of analysing mouse behaviour encouraging more prolonged assessments in the future. This capability and the possibility of training the software to recognize a greater range of behaviours, including pain-specific indicators, should be of considerable value for assessing postoperative behaviour in both mice and rats. This would allow analgesic requirements to be investigated in a greater range of rodent models than is currently feasible with conventional analysis methods.