2003A0193 - Medical Training Wet Lab - Pain Code 4D

This protocol was renewed and is now numbered 2006A0263.

Will use a variety of animals depending upon which lab is being taught over a three year period. There are alternatives currently available for the majority of these labs.

* click to view dog records

Lab 1 - Emergency Techniques & Organ perfusion demonstration

Once the animal has been anesthetized, placed on a ventilator, and prepped for the procedure, the participates will practice the different emergency procedures (i.e. venous cut-down, check tube placement, needle chest decompression, tracheotomy, diagnostic peritoneal lavage, etc ...).

Dogs, for the most part are received from Robert Perry, a USDA Class B dealer, but some dogs have come from Battelle.

In fall 2001, the Committee on Trauma of the ACS (American College of Surgeons) approved the use of simulators meeting certain criteria to be used in place of either cadavers or live animals to teach Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS). The SIMULAB® TRAUMA MAN™ surgical trainer, an anatomical human simulator designed to teach surgical procedures including open DPL, catheter DPL, chest tube insertion, pericardiocentesis, and cricothyroidotomy is one of the first simulators to be approved to teach entire ATLS courses.

Again OSU falls behind in the use of alternatives and chooses instead to use live animals.

This is OSU's reasoning in the continued use of animals in the Wet Lab

UPDATE:

Over the last several months, The Columbus Dispatch and various television news organizations have run stories about using high-tech mannequins to train National Guard medics (Dec. 1, 2008 - Practice casualties) in battlefield scenarios as well as training students how to manage medical situations that occur every day in a hospital.

A commentary by Lori Marino, Another Kind of Scientist Activism, in The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses this issue.

Many scientists believe that welfare advocacy will lead to the demise of animal research. But the worst that would happen is that we would continue the natural, inexorable process of human cultural evolution with respect to other animals. We will adapt — as we always have.

Recently, for example, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor made the decision to stop using live dogs from animal shelters for surgical training in the medical school's "Advanced Trauma and Life Support" courses, and to use simulators instead. In so doing, Michigan is following the lead of a majority (over 90 percent) of veterinary and medical schools in abandoning this antiquated vivisection paradigm for more progressive and humane approaches to training. The handful of hospitals and medical schools that still use live dogs are now under pressure to reform their practices, too.

Had simulations of surgery been used all along, then that would have been the accepted norm — the way live-animal use is now. And such thought experiments can be widely instructive. For instance, although the public may initially balk at the idea of eating lab-grown "meat" protein instead of the meat from a factory-farmed animal, that too is a matter of cultural norms that can change with time. And whether or not you're vegetarian, when you think about it, which of those practices is really the more off-putting? The status quo and societal inertia are powerful; but so are our moral impulses and our empathy.

It is time that OSU stop the use of animals in this class!

Lab 2 - Pediatric Intubation

Participants will practice intubating the animals. At the end of the lab, the animal will be recovered and either adopted out or transferred to another appropriate protocol.

Since Robert Perry, USDA Class B dealer, became the provider of cats the cats are no longer adopted but all are killed at the end of the procedures.

Cat ID	Source of Cat	Disposition of Cat
2468	Perry to OSU 10/27/05	adopted
2474	Perry to OSU 11/8/05	adopted
3553	Raised by Perry to OSU 3/3/06	Killed 3/7/06
3554	Raised by Perry to OSU 3/3/06	Killed 3/3/06
3555	Raised by Perry to OSU 3/3/06	Killed 3/3/06
3556	Raised by Perry to OSU 3/6/06	Killed 3/6/06
2601	1 yr. Male -DS- Raised by Perry to OSU 3/16/07	Killed 3/16/07
2602	6 mo. Male -DS- Raised by Perry to OSU 3/16/07	Killed 3/16/07
2603	6 mo. Male -DS- Raised by Perry to OSU 3/16/07	Killed 3/16/07
3090	Male-white-yellow-orange mix - Raised by Perry to OSU 3/14/68	Killed 3/14/08
3265	2 yr. old cat to OSU 11/10/08	Killed 11/10/08
3264	2 yr. old male cat to OSU 11/10/08	KIlled 11/10/08

Photo: Example of cat intubation / Wikimedia Commons

Lab 3 - Cardiac Surgery Techniques

Participants will practice such procedures as anastomosis of coronary vessels, coronary by-pass, heart/lund transplant, stent placement, etc. Pharmacologic interventions routinely utilized in the human patient will be given intra-operatively (such as heparin, lidocaine). The animals are killed at the end of the procedures.

Lab 4 - Abdominal Surgery Techniques

Participants with the animal under general anesthesia will experience various abdominal procedures and surgical techniques, such as laparoscopic, endoscopic or open laparotomy procedures (i.e. anatomosis, bowel resection, stapling and suturing techniques, cholicystotomy, etc). The pigs and dogs are killed at the end of the procedures.