I performed yesterday 6 subretinal injections using Isofurane as an anesthetic. The surgery lasted something less than an hour, isoflurane was set to 2% and mice were treated with Metamizol and Meloxicam as painkillers. I was checking the reflexes all way though because breathing was sometimes slow but intense and there was no respone. Even though all of them woke up and were behaving normally at least for 2 hours after the surgery, 2 of them died within 24h after the surgery. I cannot understand why this happened, since everything looked fine. I checked for injuries, bleeding but I found nothing. I am considering hypothermia (but why only 2 out of 6) or stress. Any other ideas or suggestions would be great so that I could take care next time. Thank you!!
I prefer intraperitoneal continuous-rate infusion of ketamine with or without xylazine for maintaining surgical anesthesia for an extended period of time.
Please read about male C57BL/6J mice by using ketamine (80 mg/kg) and xylazine (8 mg/kg) without or with acepromazine at 0.1 mg/kg or 0.5 mg/kg.
And, all the best.
Thank you for your response! It is quite difficult to change to intraperitoneal anaesthesia as I have already performed surgeries to previous animals in this way. I forgot to mention that my mice were Rd10, model for retinitis pigmentosa. What concerns me though, is that they were fully wake when I left them and looked fine, eating and everything. Is it possible that the anaesthesia affected them so much despite the fact that breathing was normal after they woke up?
I incline toward intraperitoneal constant rate implantation of ketamine with or without xylazine for keeping up surgical anesthesia for a broadened timeframe.
If it's not too much trouble read about male C57BL/6J mice by utilizing ketamine (80 mg/kg) and xylazine (8 mg/kg) without or with acepromazine at 0.1 mg/kg or 0.5 mg/kg
regards