Introduction: Laparoscopic skills improvement requires practice and it would benefit most when live animal model are considered. Apart from pelvic trainer, dogs and rabbits are used as the animal model for training laparoscopic surgeries at our center. Every effort was made to keep the animals alive after surgery.
Materials and methods: From January 2007 to January 2010, German shepherd dogs and Angora rabbits were selected as the animal models for laparoscopic skill training. Under general anesthesia, trainees performed several laparoscopic surgeries under supervision of experienced surgeons.
Results: A total number of 72 animals including 54 dogs and 18 rabbits were used for training laparoscopy. Totally 107 different laparoscopic procedures were done by trainees including nephrectomy, nephropexy, vesicotomy and vesicorrhaphy, vasectomies, spermatic cord ligation and unilateral oophrectomy. There were one vascular and two visceral injuries in the rabbit model which were controlled laparoscopically and conversion to open was happened in one case because of failure to extraction of the specimen from the abdominal cavity. Three visceral and six vascular injuries were happened in the canine model. Total mortality was five including three rabbits and two dogs.
Conclusions: Avoiding sacrificing the animal is important from both ethical and technical stand point. Dogs and rabbits are good models for laparoscopic training in urology and it is possible to keep the animals alive after surgery with close monitoring. We also found the rabbit as a good model for practicing infantile laparoscopic surgery as it simulates the real surgery in this difficult age group.