title: Reliable and reproducible murine models for commonly used abdominal plastic surgical flaps.
abstract: Animal models have been used for many years in surgical research to develop different surgical techniques, improve understanding of anatomy and physiology and hone surgical skills. The benefit of such models has been particularly important in developing relatively young specialties like plastic surgery and many plastic surgical techniques are designed and studied in animals long before they are used in humans. We describe techniques for raising several reliable and reproducible abdominal flaps in rodents, including transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous flaps in rats and mice, superficial inferior epigastric artery flaps in rats and perforator flaps in rats. The intention of this paper is to act as a point of reference for any microvascular or plastic surgeon who is planning to perform abdominal plastic surgical flap research or further microvascular skills.
authors.affiliation: Collaborative Transplantation Research Group, Bosch Institute, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia. jonathon.cubitt@buckshosp.nhs.uk
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cubitt
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pennington
authors.forename: Chuanmin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bishop
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharland
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D019074:Epigastric Arteries / Q000601:surgery / Q000637:transplantation*; D005260:Female; D006084:Graft Rejection; D006085:Graft Survival; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008833:Microcirculation / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D011917:Rats, Inbred Lew; D019651:Plastic Surgery Procedures / Q000379:methods; D017568:Rectus Abdominis / Q000601:surgery / Q000637:transplantation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016038:Skin Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D013524:Surgical Flaps / Q000098:blood supply*