[The chick embryo as a model of fetal surgery: intestinal atresia]

Aiming at depicting the advantages of chick embryo as a model of fetal surgery we report on our experience of 402 operations carried out in an attempt to induce fetal intestinal obstruction. We have used fertile domestic hen (gallus gallus) eggs incubated at 37.5 degrees with 80% humidity and turned every hour. At the 12th day of incubation we coagulated, after exposing the umbilical cord, a small bowel loop in the physiologic umbilical hernia through a 1 cm-wide opening in the shell which was then sealed with plastic sterile adhesive. After sacrifice at the 15th day of the 76 surviving embryos (19%) we found type I intestinal atresia with localized meconium peritonitis and dilated proximal loop in 46 cases. In 3 out of them there was, like in some human newborns with intestinal obstruction, increased amount of bile-stained amniotic fluid. Both macroscopic and microscopic findings were identical to those usually found in human atresia and in that experimentally induced in fetus of other animal species. We firmly believe that our model is as good as any other for this purpose and, at the same time, it is cheaper and easier to handle.