Five-Step Self-Assessment Evaluation for Microvascular Patency in Non-Living Specimen

Area of Science:

• Surgical training methodology
• Microsurgery assessment
• Vascular anastomosis evaluation

Background:

• Effective assessment tools are crucial for microsurgical training.
• Evaluating vessel patency in non-living specimens presents challenges.
• Rat femoral vessel anastomosis is a common model for microsurgical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a 5-step evaluation method for predicting vessel patency.
• To correlate this evaluation score with actual patency rates in rat femoral vessel anastomoses.
• To provide a self-assessment tool for trainees in basic microsurgery.

Main Methods:

• Collected 47 rat femoral vessel anastomoses from a microsurgery course.
• Classified anastomoses into successful (Group 1) and failed (Group 2) groups.
• Applied a 5-step evaluation (appearance, catheter passage, expansion, outflow, leakage) to assess anastomosis quality blindly.

Main Results:

• Mean scores were 7.92 for successful and 1.55 for failed anastomoses.
• A passing score of 5 was established using ROC curve analysis.
• Predicted success rates ranged from 92% to 100% based on the evaluation score.

Conclusions:

• The 5-step evaluation method is an effective tool for trainees.
• It allows for self-monitoring of practice results in non-living specimens.
• This method aids in improving basic microsurgical skills.