Introduction

The chicken thigh is a widely used training model in microsurgery. We use it in our training laboratory on Day 2 of our 5 day course, to transition between synthetic vessels and rat femoral artery.

Advantages

• easily available (from supermarkets)
• minimal preparation (in many places you can get it already in pre-cut thighs, meaning it is ready to use right out of the packaging)
• it is a biological model with good simulation of dissection, preparation of vessel etc
• allows variety of practice - different tissue types (artery, vein, nerve); various sizes (including supermicrosurgery)

Limitations

• Unable to test for patency - but this can be overcome with some modification (see below)
• No bleeding from leaks or surrounding tissue, affecting some aspects of the simulation
• Main Ischiatic artery is quite big compared to rat femoral artery (which is closer to true microsurgery vessel size of 1mm)

Model

The anatomy of the dissected thigh is available here: https://medicine.uiowa.edu/iowaprotocols/microsurgical-chicken-thigh-model-study

Variations

• Infusion to check flow and leaks (see Zeng 2018, Shulzhenko 2020)
  • this variation adds the ability to test for "patency" and "leaks" to the base model
  • A variety of techniques have been described to enable this
• Supermicrosurgery
• Chicken wing instead of chicken thigh (Hino 2003)
• Other chicken vessels: brachial, basilic, radial, ulnar, ischiatic, cranial tibial, common dorsal metatarsal (see Kang 2017)

See also

Microscopes and Equipment for Training for an introduction into the basics requirements for practice and training.

References

Hino, A. (2003). Training in Microvascular Surgery Using a Chicken Wing Artery. Neurosurgery, 52(6), 1495–1498. https://doi.org/10.1227/01.NEU.0000065174.83840.62

Shulzhenko, N. O., Zeng, W., Albano, N. J., Lyon, S. M., Wieland, A. M., Mahajan, A. Y., Williams, D., Bentz, M. L., & Poore, S. O. (2020). Multispecialty Microsurgical Course Utilizing the Blue-Blood Chicken Thigh Model Significantly Improves Resident Comfort, Confidence, and Attitudes in Multiple Domains. Journal of Reconstructive Microsurgery, 36(02), 142–150. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0039-1700523

Zeng, W., Shulzhenko, N. O., Feldman, C. C., Dingle, A. M., & Poore, S. O. (2018). “Blue-Blood”- Infused Chicken Thigh Training Model for Microsurgery and Supermicrosurgery. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Global Open, 6(4), e1695. https://doi.org/10.1097/GOX.0000000000001695