JOURNAL OF RECONSTRUCTIVE MICROSURGERY, cilt.22, sa.8, ss.625-630, 2006 (SCI-Expanded)
In microsurgical training, the femoral vein is used frequently for a microvenous anastomosis model. But the femoral vein in the rat does not completely simulate the human vein because of its thin wall, fragility, and tendency to collapse. These anatomic characteristics cause some difficulty in carrying out anastomoses in microsurgery training particularly for beginners. The authors propose the external jugular vein of the rat for microsurgical. training in microvenous anastomoses. In 10 Wistar rats, the anatomy of the external jugular vein was studied by dissection and histology. Anatomic dissections demonstrate that the external jugular vein has an average diameter of 1.9 mm (range: 1.6 to 2.1 mm) without tendency to collapse. The vein is easily dissected without any accompanying anatomic structure for an average segment of 45 mm, allowing effortless approximator clamp placement.