LARC GUIDELINES FOR POST-PROCEDURAL (POST-SURGICAL) ANALGESIA IN RESEARCH ANIMALS

Survival surgery and some other procedures carry the potential for post-procedural pain for laboratory animals. It is the Principal Investigator's responsibility to plan for the assessment and management of this potential animal pain. Appropriate analgesics, humane study endpoints, and other techniques must be employed and documented. All personnel involved in potentially painful experiments must be adequately trained, experienced and supervised. The Animal Welfare Assurance Program provides and documents this training.

General guidelines should be refined to fit the particular protocol and the procedures performed; a veterinarian must be consulted in planning potentially painful experiments (including some nonsurvival procedures).

Potentially useful analgesics and their doses can be found on this web site as well as in published literature. A complete literature search for refinement alternatives includes the search for post-procedural pain management. LARC may be able to provide other options if these suggestions interfere with data collection.

Plans for post-procedural pain or distress assessment and care are approved as part of a particular IACUC application, as they vary with species and procedure. Body weight loss is suggested as an indicator of the animal's welfare. The frequency of assessment for pain or distress (daily or more frequently) must also be specified.

Analgesics are often administered before signs of pain are clearly evident. Preoperative or intraoperative administration of analgesics enhances postsurgical analgesia. (Miller 1994; Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources 1996) Some anesthetics, such as isoflurane, provide minimal analgesia once the animal has regained consciousness, so analgesic administration before anesthetic recovery is strongly recommended.

All larger animals should have individual health records and assessments and treatments should be noted here. For rodents, frogs, etc. a more general statement in a laboratory notebook may suffice; it should clearly verify that the protocol's provisions for drug administration and pain or distress assessment are being followed.

Husbandry techniques and other nonpharmacologic methods should also be considered to improve animal pain management. These can include immobilization of body parts that have undergone surgery, provision of extra bedding, special placement of food and water or other techniques.

Euthanasia is warranted for pain that cannot be controlled by other means.

In some instances, use of analgesic drugs could interfere with the experimental design. This must be clearly explained and justified in the IACUC application. Animals on such studies are listed as USDA Pain Category E animals (Procedures that cause unrelieved pain or distress). The university's annual report to regulatory agencies will use the application's language to report on these painful experiments for which analgesic drugs are not being administered.

References

Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources (1996). Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Washington DC, National Academy Press.
{Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, 1996, #373}

Miller, R. D., Ed. (1994). Anesthesia. New York, Churchill Livingstone.