Animal Models for Surgical Research

Abstract

As a surgeon, you will be the best equipped to conceptualize and construct a unique animal model that closely mimics the human clinical presentation. When beginning your basic science research career, establishing your own, novel animal model is one of the very first things you must do. After you decide what field of interest and what specific clinical problem or disease you wish to study, you must validate and establish an animal model. This model will define your research and associate it with your body of work such that even when a surgery technician or resident in your lab or anyone is presenting data from your lab, because your animal model is recognized as your ‘signature’ the audience will know you are the principal investigator. The animal model you choose should be easy to visualize the effects on a daily basis, easily reproducible and chosen specifically to highlight your disease of interest. In this chapter, we will explore several different animal models and several different ways to study human disease in animals. This is in no way comprehensive, but covers some of the more frequently used models.

Appropriate animal committee permission should be sought for all animal model research.