However, scientific evidence for the efficacy of local anesthesia for pain relief during castration of piglets is still lacking. German law also permits the application of local veterinary medicinal products that are able to eliminate pain. Gonadotropin-releasing-hormone (GnRH)-vaccination, boar fattening and surgical castration under general anesthesia are discussed as alternatives to castration without anesthesia. Therefore, according to the German Animal Welfare Act, surgical castration of male piglets less than seven days of age without anesthesia will be forbidden in 2021. Until now in Germany, castration has traditionally been performed without anesthesia in the first week of life, although it has been scientifically shown that surgical castration is a painful procedure.
In the EU, more than 100 million male piglets are castrated every year to prevent the risk of boar taint in carcasses. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.įunding: This work was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL, ) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, granted by the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE, grant number: 2817HS016, 2817HS013). Received: MaAccepted: JPublished: July 30, 2020Ĭopyright: © 2020 Saller et al. PLoS ONE 15(7):Įditor: Michael Bader, Max Delbruck Centrum fur Molekulare Medizin Berlin Buch, GERMANY (2020) Local anesthesia in piglets undergoing castration-A comparative study to investigate the analgesic effects of four local anesthetics on the basis of acute physiological responses and limb movements. However, injection of a local anesthetic seems to be painful.Ĭitation: Saller AM, Werner J, Reiser J, Senf S, Deffner P, Abendschön N, et al. In conclusion, all four local anesthetics administered are highly effective at reducing signs of nociception during castration under light isoflurane anesthesia. No significant differences were found between groups regarding parameters of plasma cortisol, catecholamines and CgA. However, many piglets exhibited limb movements during injection, indicating that the injection itself causes nociceptive pain. Injection itself was not associated with significant changes in MAP or HR. Piglets receiving a preoperative local anesthetic exhibited the fewest limb movements during castration, while the NaCl group exhibited the most. Local anesthetic administration significantly reduced changes in BP and HR associated with castration. Surgical castration without pain relief revealed significant changes in mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) and HR. The results confirm that castration without analgesia is highly painful. Acute physiological responses to noxious stimuli at injection and castration were evaluated by measuring blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine and chromogranin A (CgA) limb movements were quantified. Then, 0.5 ml of a local anesthetic or NaCl was injected intratesticularly (i.t.), and 0.5 ml was administered subscrotally. Twenty minutes before castration, all treatment groups except group H received one injection per testis. By excluding stress and fear as disruptive factors via a minimum anesthesia model, all piglets received individual minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) isoflurane anesthesia. In total, 54 piglets aged 3 to 7 days were distributed into 6 treatment groups: handling (H) castration without pain relief (sodium chloride, NaCl) and castration with a local anesthetic: 4% procaine (P), 2% lidocaine (L), 0.5% bupivacaine (B) or 20 mg/ml mepivacaine (M). This prospective, randomized and double-blinded study aimed to evaluate the analgesic effects of four different local anesthetics for piglet castration during the first week of life. Surgical castration of male piglets without analgesia is a painful procedure.
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