Animal Facility and Experimental Operations

It has three rooms with positive pressure and one room with negative pressure for procedures with infectious material. It is equipped with two Biosafety hoods and has a maximum capacity of 576 cages on ventilated racks. All the rooms have an inhalation anaesthesia unit and a fully-equipped procedures table.

The room has two anaesthesia tables, two high-resolution laparoscopy towers, a scopic and graphic X-ray arch, and two surgical microscopes. This is the area in which training is carried out in the different services offered at the Donostia University Hospital, and where surgical research projects are carried out on medium-sized and large animals.

This area is equipped with seven surgical microscopes, an optical microscope, a safety hood for chemical reactive use, a refrigerated centrifuge and an inhalation anaesthesia tower connected to all work stations. This area also houses a behaviour room equipped with rotameters, treadmill, Grip Strength and compulsive behaviour testing equipment.

This area houses mice, rats, rabbits and pigs in different rooms. It is equipped with two quarantine rooms with an SAS pass-through facility in each. It also has a multi-mode room for short-term procedures using a high number of animals, with a capacity for 60 rat cages and 144 mice cages. This area is also equipped with a work table fitted with precision scales and inhalation anaesthesia equipment. The maximum capacity in this area is for 180 rat cages on ventilated racks and 504 mice cages on ventilated racks. The maximum housing capacity for rabbits would be 36 males and 72 females. In the case of pigs, it would be 16 animals.