Blood is removed from the animals for a variety of scientific purposes. This process may well be unnecessarily stressful for an animal, simply because of the handling, the type of anaesthetic used or the discomfort associated with a particular technique. The physiological changes associated with increased stress may even invalidate the results. Cannulation is considered when repeated samples of blood are required so as to avoid multiple needle entries at any one site. This enables us to design complex experiments in which time course information or evaluation of repeated treatments is necessary. It in turn reduces the number of animals necessary to acquire such information and thus facilitates the compliance with the animal use. In this paper we have described a simple microsurgical technique to collect blood samples from the right atrium through a catheter (cannula) implanted into the right external jugular vein of the adult rats. Blood is easily sampled while the rats reside in their home cages.
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