Just had another one of those lab-lectures and oh. My. God. I just watched a mouse being intubated before a catheter's inserted into its carotid artery while another tube is inserted into its jugular vein for direct intravenous drug administration. It's like open-heart surgery -- you can't look away even if you're squeamish. Not to mention the data for systolic pressure and EGM and such was scrolling across the giant screen in front of the room and the ventilator was pretty loud. We got a crash course on AV blocking because apparently too much acetylcholine will cause the heart to stop beating. In order to insert the catheters the blood vessels have to be sutured both proximal and distal to the site of insertion and my god, I would like to take a moment to express my admiration of the lab tech's mad skills, given that this is a MOUSE and everything is in the millimeters range.
Then we watched the demo for echocardiography on the normal, hypertrophic, and transgenic mice. It is much less invasive but the mice still have to be knocked out since the fur in front of their chest needs to be shaved.
The room came with over-head surgery lights and everything. My God.
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