Introduction:

Microsurgical techniques are currently applied in different surgical specialties worldwide. During the 90´s, our center began to implement vascular and nerve microsurgery trainings to specialists and national and foreign residents, respectively.

Objective:

To evaluate the results of microsurgery training that it is taught in the Center for Experimental Surgery at "Victoria de Girón" Institute of Basic and Pre-Clinical Sciences.

Material and methods:

A retrospective longitudinal study was carried out to evaluate the microsurgery training program. The training was divided into three main parts: theoretical lessons; practices upon the latex simulator; end-to-end anastomosis of small intestine on the rat; and finally, the development of basic microsurgical techniques on different vascular structures (abdominal aorta and vein) and the sciatic nerve of the rat, for a total of 90 hours of training. The total enrollment during the mentioned period was 203 students to whom a survey was applied at the end of the training; also, the time of realization of anastomosis and the vascular permeability were measured and evaluated as Bad, Good, and Excellent.

Results:

The results were satisfactory in general, but 90% of students that were carrying out their studies of a surgical specialty showed better skills in a shorter period than those that didn't practice surgery, demonstrating a less time-consuming exercise in the realization of vessel anastomosis and obtaining a good vascular permeability in this group.

Conclusions:

This teaching method constitutes a useful tool so that the students develop the necessary skills to carry out microsurgical practices in clinical surgery successfully.

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