[Experimental microsurgery of blood vessels and nerves in laboratory animals and their importance for plastic...

The authors give a survey of the suitability and use of different laboratory animals in the transplantation with microvascular and microneurovascular anastomoses of island flaps, muscles and composite grafts as musculo-cutaneous and osteo-musculo-cutaneous ones. This report includes the rat, rabbit, dog and pig. Preferable for learning and training suture techniques of microvessels and nerves are rats. Quite suitable in experimental research is the "epigastric" flap of rats and rabbits. Transplantations of muscles and composite grafts as musculo-cutaneous and osteo-musculo-cutaneous ones, with microvascular and microneurovascular anastomoses have been performed mostly in dogs. In order to find out suitable donor sites for microvascular and microneurovascular free flap transplantation the pig is used, showing a pattern of skin vessels most similar to that of man. But only few laboratories might be able to carry out experiments in pigs.