Perioperative socialization, care and monitoring of National Institutes of Health miniature swine undergoing ocular surgery and sampling of peripheral blood

Abstract

Swine are a frequent species of choice for testing new surgical procedures and for transplantation studies. However, information concerning best practice to prepare pigs for surgery and postoperative treatment and monitoring is limited, despite a perception that preoperative socialization is beneficial. Therefore we examined the effect of preoperative visits by project personnel on compliance of 26 National Institutes of Health (NIH) minipigs subject to corneal transplantation. We briefly describe sedation and anaesthesia protocols developed for surgery and multiple postoperative interventions in order to facilitate interpretation of data relating to pig compliance. Preoperative visit variables and measures of preoperative socialization were correlated with postoperative outcome. Principal component analysis (PCA) of postoperative outcome variables identified a factor accounting for 53.5% of the variance that was significantly associated with two factors derived from PCA of preoperative factors (accounting, respectively, for 54.7% and 26.0% of the variance; P = 0.019 for the overall model, P = 0.041 and 0.040 for factors 1 and 2, respectively), such that more time spent with pigs before surgery and higher socialization scores were associated with less postoperative stress and difficulty of eye medication. Moreover, two of the preoperative visit variables, time spent with only one person in the pen and time spent with two or more people in the pen, contributed predominantly to PCA factors 1 and 2, respectively, indicating that they were fulfilling two qualitatively different requirements for socialization. We conclude that NIH minipigs are fully compliant with anaesthetic and postoperative experimental procedures provided they are well-socialized to project personnel before surgery.

A Model of Corneal Graft Rejection in Semi-Inbred NIH Miniature Swine: Significant T-Cell Infiltration of Clinically Accepted Allografts

“…These data, in combination with our previous report documenting preoperative preparation of pigs and anesthesia protocols, 15 show clearly that corneal transplantation and long-term follow-up are feasible in the NIH minipig. The tempo of rejection was similar in two strain combinations bearing major and minor histocompatibility mismatches.…”

“…15 We showed here that these pigs are similar to man in ocular manifestations of rejection and the limited mitotic potential of corneal endothelium. A further important implication of our findings from the human perspective is that a specific immune response, and perhaps immune-mediated damage, might be occurring in what appears to be a ''quiet'' eye.…”

“…15 Preparation of the donor cornea, surgical procedure, and postoperative assessment of corneal inflammation and rejection are described in Supplementary Methods (see Supplementary Material, http://www.iovs.org/lookup/suppl/ doi:10.1167/iovs.11-9106/-/DCSupplemental).…”

Nursing and training of pigs used in renal transplantation studies

“…It has previously been shown that more time spent with pigs before surgery is associated with less postoperative stress and difficulty of eye medication. 24 However, in that study, no standardised protocol was used and the pigs needed sedation before clinical examination. The present study shows that the use of a standardised protocol makes it possible for all pigs to accept petting, brushing and voluntary interaction with people during all examinations post-operatively, without any need for sedation or restraint.…”

Genome-Wide Analysis in Swine Associates Corneal Graft Rejection with Donor-Recipient Mismatches in Three Novel Histocompatibility Regions and One Locus Homologous to the Mouse H-3 Locus

“…Anaesthesia was performed and pain relief prescribed and supervised by a qualified veterinary anaesthetist. Corneal transplantation, perioperative procedures and outcome were previously described [ 10 , 13 ]. Briefly, corneas from SLA bb Babraham (n = 6) or SLA dd line minipigs (n = 10) were transplanted to SLA cc line minipig recipients, each combination providing both major and minor histocompatibility mismatches.…”