Surgical services

We perform the implantations, or train your team to. At your facility, under your protocol.

Most suppliers will send you a device and a diagram. We can send you someone who has implanted it a few thousand times. Our surgical practice is led by our Chief Surgical Advisor and staffed by surgeons with the species and the access site you are running.

Implantation surgery in progress, sterile field with the port being placed

Four ways groups use us

We do the surgery

Contract implantation at your facility, to your approved protocol and alongside your attending veterinarian. Used most often for a first cohort on a device or model new to the group, and for studies where a failed implantation costs more than the whole hardware budget.

We train your surgical staff

Hands-on training in the approach, the tunneling and port placement, the closure, and the post-operative care that decides whether the animal is still on study at week twelve. Your people do the work; our surgeon corrects it while it is happening.

We train your trainer

For groups that run their own surgical onboarding. We work with the one or two people who will teach everyone else: the technique itself, the points where new surgeons go wrong, what to watch for in a trainee's hands, and how to sign someone off. You can bring the next hire up to standard without calling us.

We fix a technique that is not working

Patency failing, exit sites turning, animals lost in the second week. Sometimes the device is wrong. More often the device is fine and something in the approach, the tip position or the aftercare is not. We will tell you which one you have.

When it is worth bringing us in

A device or access site the group has not implanted before
A new surgical hire, or a technician who learned the technique from someone who has since left
A study where the animals, the compound or the dosing window make a failed cohort unaffordable
A model that has been losing animals and nobody can say why
A protocol being written now, where the surgical approach is still open

If the right answer is that you do not need us, that is the answer you will get.

How it works

Tell us the study. Species, access site, number of animals, duration, and what has been tried already.
We scope it with you. A call with the surgeon who would do the work: what they would do, how long it takes, and whether training your own staff is the better use of the visit.
We quote the work. Scope, dates and travel, in writing, before anything is scheduled.
We work to your protocol. Your IACUC approval, your attending veterinarian, your facility and your SOPs. We do not ask anyone to work outside their own institution's requirements.
You keep the technique. Whatever we do, your staff watch, and the written approach stays with you.

What we implant

Vascular access is the bulk of the work. These are routes we place routinely, in the species you are running.

Route	Species	Typical use
Jugular port and catheter	NHP, canine, swine	Continuous infusion, repeat dosing, serial sampling
Femoral port and catheter	NHP, canine, swine	Where the jugular is committed or the study needs a second line
Duodenal catheterization	Canine, swine	Enteral dosing and absorption work
Intrathecal catheterization	NHP, canine, swine	CNS dosing and long-term CSF collection, via hemi or dorsal laminectomy
Bile cannulation	NHP, canine, swine	Total bile collection, BileCath T-tube systems
Portal vein and hepatic artery	Canine, swine	Hepatic first-pass and regional delivery studies

If the route you need is not listed, ask. The list is what comes up most, not the limit.

What we train

The surgical approach itself. Exposure, tunneling, port placement, fixation and closure, for the route and species you are running
Aseptic technique at access. The single largest source of port failures blamed on the device. See the eight-step chart
Port maintenance. Flush and lock protocols, dead-space accounting, what a failing port looks like two weeks before it fails
Pre, intra and post-operative care. Under academic conditions or GLP, including the documentation
Signing people off. What competent looks like in a trainee's hands, so your trainer can certify the next hire

Beyond vascular access

Groups bring us in for the ports, then find we can build the rest of the model too. Our surgical experience spans military, medical device, academic and multi-species CRO settings, and covers neural, cardiothoracic, abdominal, orthopedic and vascular work.

Neural and CNS. Stereotaxic technique, neural microinjection, laminectomy and disc dosing, long-term CSF collection
Cardiovascular. Telemetry implantation, aortic and pulmonary artery flow probe placement, left ventricular infarct models, vascular grafting
Abdominal and hepatic. Bile, portal vein and hepatic artery cannulation, organ biopsy, laparoscopic technique
Orthopedic. Femur defect models with micro plates and screws, femur, radius and ulna defects, meniscal defects
Imaging and interventional. Fluoroscopic imaging and dosing, wound healing models

Much of this is surgical model development rather than a catalog procedure. If you are designing a model from scratch, that conversation is free.

Who leads it

David Moddrelle, SRS, Chief Surgical Advisor, AVABIO. Over forty years in laboratory animal research, thirty-five of them performing surgery and developing surgical models. Certified by the Academy of Surgical Research in Surgical Research. He has held Principal Surgeon and Senior Surgical Scientist positions across military, medical device, academic and multi-species CRO settings, and has designed and run surgical programs under both academic conditions and GLP.

He was part of the collaborative effort behind the side-access catheter system developed at AVABIO, and much of his telemetry work has been modifying accepted procedures to get longer, more sustainable data collection out of the same animal.

He sets the surgical standard the practice works to, scopes the engagements, and trains the people who carry them out.

An engineer can tell you what a device is. A surgeon who has implanted it for decades can tell you how it behaves in the animal at week six, and why the last one failed.

Talk to a surgeon Why studies fail

Surgical inquiries: 888.347.8304 or surgical@avabio.com.