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A model of the aorta for teaching selective catheterisation

Departments of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, and Cardinal Cushing Hospital, Brockton, Mass.

This excerpt was created in the absence of an abstract.

A new flexible and hollow model of the aorta and its major branches has been developed for demonstrating, teaching and practising the various techniques of angiography, particularly the newer methods of selective and superselective catheterisation. Until now, since no practical model has existed and animal catheterisation has proved unsuitable for reasons of convenience, anatomy and size, the angiographer has had to learn on the patient himself. This is clearly undesirable and has undoubtedly resulted in unnecessarily slow instruction of trainees and an increased incidence of complications. The present model has been designed to help resolve these very practical problems.

The aortic model (Fig. 1) is life-size and incorporates a number of representative primary and secondary branches, namely the renal, coeliac, splenic, hepatic, innominate, subclavian, internal mammary, carotid, vertebral and coronary arteries. Conveniently, though somewhat unanatomically, a vessel representing a renal vein and its suprarenal tributary is present on the right side of the trunk vessel which thus also serves as an inferior vena cava.

The model is extremely flexible and is mounted on a rigid plastic base so as to permit setting of a variety of configurations of the aortic arch and angles of origin of the major branches, simulating many of the conditions encountered in angiographic practice. Thus the position and direction of the aortic root and shape of the arch may be selected on the peg board and the direction of origin and tortuosity of the arch branches fixed by placement of a series of adjustable angle pieces.