Looking for qualified surgical resource people for your next research project?

We can help.

Whether you need someone to perform your surgical projects or someone to instruct your own staff in these procedures, there's a very good chance that we can assist you. Our research surgeons have both animal research surgical capabilites as well as human surgical experience. You can benefit from both perspectives when you need a surgical project. With research projects totalling 12 years plus hospital surgical experience of 20 years, there's a very good chance we can help you with your needs.

What kinds of things can we do?

Pretty much anything you need done using survival surgery techniques can be done. We have experience with mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, and pigs. Plus we have human surgical experience in all the surgical specialties, cardiac, neuro, plastic, orthopedic, thoracic, vascular, OBG, urology, etc.

What else?

Need more? How about finding the most efficient way to get the results you require? In our latest research surgical position, we changed the survival stats for animal surgery from a dismal 70% to well over 97%. How? By changing the methods of anesthesia from intraperitoneal injection (hard to control) to inhalation (easy to control and very predictable). We can show you how to set up your own anesthesia system.

We pioneered several new methods of doing animal surgery (sorry, confidential) not from the ideas of research professors and lab assistants but from practical, at-the-table human and research surgery experience.

Prime example: A researcher wanted to place a certain research substance into a rabbit's stomach for testing. He thought he would need to get the test material into the animal using a feeding tube placed directly into the animals esophagus, a procedure called an esophagostomy. Now, thinking that he knew what he was doing we went along and performed the procedure (with great discomfort to the animals plus racking up some serious expenses for his lab.)

Then, on closer examination we discovered that the substance didn't really require that this type of extreme procedure be performed. It only needed to get into the animal's stomach. The answer was simple, required only minutes, could be done with a feeding needle and some interesting food to combine with the test material. We simply mixed the test material with the food (strawberry jam), placed it on the back of his tongue and the rabbit did the rest to get it into his stomach. It required no anesthesia, only an animal restraint and a few seconds work to get the substance where it was needed. Simple, cheap, effective.

Need more?

We were faced with a problem with a wound healing experiment in mice. We needed to make a round excision in the animal's skin but the only tools available to make a round hole was a biopsy punch. Using such a punch meant placing considerable pressure on the animal, thereby risking mashing the animal and causing injury to get a circular hole placed. We also could have lifted the skin into a fold, used the punch against a tongue blade to cut through both halves of the skin to get a round hole. It would work but the shape of hole wouldn't be very consistent.

The answer? Tapping into our hospital experience, we came up with an elegant solution: Use an aortic punch to create the hole. This instrument is used in cardiac surgery to make a nice round hole in the aorta for grafting a vein or artery onto the aorta. Forour purposes, it was a simple matter of making a small incision, placing the punch anvil into the incision and closing the handles. Perfect round hole every time. Simple, effective, consistent.

What about you?

Are you needing some assistance in getting the surgical parts of your project accomplished without spending months looking for the experience you need? We can almost certainly assist you in your needs. What can we do?

For your needs, we can perform your surgery for you, photo-document the procedures, and harvest the animals and collect samples for histology (currently limited to the Nashville, Tennessee area). You can order just the surgical procedures done or we can do all of these other services. (Day-to-day monitoring is typically the responsibilty of the lab members.)

Alternatively, we can assist you (anywhere) in getting the procedures done with your own people. After studying your needs, we can come and observe your people do the surgery. Then, we will take what we observe and consider if we can offer suggestions about what we observe. Is it the most effective and efficient method to get you what you want? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Another perspective from an experienced surgical team might just help you to better plan the procedure or assist in finding simpler ways to do the work, and possibly finding alternative methods of doing the job to get you the results you need.

Bottom line

Before you waste a lot of time looking for someone with surgical experience to perform your surgery, get another perspective. Tell us what your needs are. There's a very good chance you can get the answer right here. You don't have to search for competent surgical people, you don't have to pay for experienced surgical experience when you aren't using it, and you don't have to put off doing your projects until you do find surgical experience. It's all right here.

Send us a description of your needs and we'll get back with you as soon as possible. Simply click here.

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