Extraocular muscle surgery on goats' eye: An inexpensive technique to enhance residents' surgical skills

Hands-on resident surgical training for various ocular procedures is essential to impart good surgical skills to the budding ophthalmologists. Here in this report, we demonstrate a simple and inexpensive technique of performing extraocular muscle surgery on goats' eye. These animal eyes possess soft tissue resemblance to that of human eyes to a greater extent in terms of scleral rigidity, muscle elasticity, its width, thickness, and its insertion onto the sclera. Therefore, rectus muscle recession, resection, and plication surgeries can be performed repeatedly to improve an individual's orientation and practical experience before performing the procedure on human eyes.

Buckling surgery on a goat's eye: A simple technique to enhance residents' surgical skill

Buckling surgery is one of the common procedures performed by the retinal surgeons for visual rehabilitation at the earliest in cases of retinal detachment. The optimal surgical skill in this section can only be achieved with repeated practices and clinical experiences. Here, we describe an easy and inexpensive way to perform, practice, and refine surgical skills by demonstrating this complicated surgery in a simple manner on goat's eyes. The advantages of this technique are real-tissue handling experiences and repeatability of the procedure with almost similar practical implications. Thus, whenever feasible, every attempt should be made to refine the residents or budding ophthalmologists surgical skills by undertaking this technique in their routine curriculum.

Optimal refinement of residents' surgical skills by training on induced goat's eye corneoscleral perforation

Surgical skill enhancement for the residents under training can be performed through various efforts. Here in this report, the authors describe a technique of corneoscleral perforation repair on goat's eye, as the tissue resemblance and the reality of experience while performing crucial steps are similar to human eyes. Beginning from tissue handling, optimal suture placement was taught with an intention to impart quality techniques of traumatic globe injury repair. Therefore, rather than training on expensive artificial eye model, training budding surgeons on goat's eye gives much more realistic tissue handling experiences in the presence of constant challenges almost similar to human eyes.

Goat’s eye integrated with a human cataractous lens: A training model for phacoemulsification.

A relatively simple and inexpensive technique to train surgeons in phacoemulsification using a goat’s eye integrated with a human cataractous nucleus is described. The goat’s eye is placed on a bed of cotton within the lumen of a cylindrical container. This is then mounted on a rectangular thermocol so that the limbus is presented at the surgical field. After making a clear corneal entry with a keratome, the trainer makes a 5–5.5 mm continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis in the anterior lens capsule, creates a crater of adequate depth in the cortex and inserts the human nucleus within this crater in the goat’s capsular bag. The surgical wound is sutured, and the goat’s eye is ready for training. Creating the capsulorhexis with precision and making the crater of adequate depth to snugly accommodate the human nucleus are the most important steps to prevent excessive wobbling of the nucleus while training.