The "Dog" That Will Save Lives

A very realist and graphic synthetic dog is currently being developed by scientists for medical training and practice for veterinarians. This weird-looking dog will be used as a replacement for terminal surgery, where actual animals, mainly from kennels, are anesthetized, used for practicing different operations, from neutering to brain surgery, and finally euthanized.

“I do feel I carry that sin. I still feel guilty about it” said veterinarian and Vice President of SynDaver Lab, David Danielson. Veterinary students will now be able to perform multiple surgeries on the canine and will count on it to react in a appropriate and realistic way, allowing them to make trials and mistakes.

Veterinarians have been looking for alternatives for a long time, and Danielson is giving the possibility to change veterinary medicine for the better. This laboratory generated a range of different synthetic tissues, including human ones, and is now working on an array of training varieties for their synthetic dog. The creature includes features such as a real-time heartbeat and a circulatory system, allowing the fake animal to bleed quite realistically.

“SynDaver Canine is our revolutionary canine surgical simulator. Based on 20+ years of SynDaver research and made from water, fibers and salts, this model includes individual bones, muscles, organs, veins and arteries” explains their website. “The model supports 30+ common procedures and is basically like a large 3D jigsaw puzzle and may be refurbished indefinitely”. Their plan is to donate about twenty models to various veterinary colleges around the world. SynDaver is also working on a number of full-scale human models for surgery training purposes that have the ability to lose limbs.

Source: Syndaver. Image: Shutterstock