Services Animal Welfare

Pigs, sheep and rabbits, are well established large animal models used for a variety of acute and chronic preclinical experimental studies in the areas of cardiovascular, respiratory, visceral, organ transplantation as well as bone and soft tissue research.

For this broad range of preclinical large animal trials, a well equipped conventional experimental OR and a state-of-the-art Hybrid OR are available here at the University Hospital of Zurich.

In 2016 approximately 240 large animal cases were operated under 36 different academic research and industry (R&D) projects. In order to conduct these studies to the highest scientific, legal and animal welfare standards, support was provided by the veterinary team 24/7 and at all stages of these projects (eg. legal framework, planning, conduct of the study etc.). All large animal experiments were conducted by interdisciplinary teams consisting of veterinarians, technicians and surgeons coming from different surgical clinics of the University Hospital Zurich and the Children's Hospital Zurich, engineers from various departments of the ETH as well as from independent external companies. The local integration of the experimental large animal operating unit in the University Hospital of Zurich allows for a swift alteration of clinicians between the patient and the experimental animal. This is a pre-requisite for rapid progress in translational research, as it allows to directly integrate the results of research conducted in the animal lab into patient care (bench-to-bedside).