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Objective: Although all animal studies are conducted in line with a specific purpose, we think that not all animal studies are performed for a scientific purpose but for personal curiosity or to fulfill a requirement. The aim of the present study is to reveal the purposes of experimental studies conducted on animals., Matherial and Methods: We searched for experimental studies performed on rats in general surgery clinics via PubMed, and obtained the e-mail addresses of the corresponding authors for each study. Afterwards, we sent a 7-item questionnaire to the authors and awaited their responses., Results: Seventy-three (22.2%) of 329 authors responded to the questionnaire. Within these studies, 31 (42.5%) were conducted as part of a dissertation, while the remaining 19 (26.0%) were conducted to meet the academic promotion criteria. Only 23 (31.5%) were conducted for scientific purposes. The cost of 41% of those studies was higher than 2500 $., Conclusion: As shown in this study, the main objective of carrying out animal studies in Turkey is usually to prepare a dissertation or to be entitled to academic promotion. Animal experiments must be planned and performed as scientific studies to support related clinical studies. Additionally, animal studies must have well-defined objectives and be carried out in line with scientific purposes that may lead to useful developments in medicine, rather than personal interests., Competing Interests: No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

The most frequent abdominal pathology requiring emergent surgery is acute appendicitis. Laparoscopic appendectomy has been performed for the treatment of acute appendicitis since 1983. Closure of the appendix stump is vital to prevent severe postoperative complications. Different methods are described for closure such as stapler, endoloop, titanium clips, non-absorbable polymer clips (hem-o-lok clip), handmade loops, transsection by Ligasure or with bipolar cautery. The ideal method should be safe, applicable and cheap. The most appropriate method remains to be controversial. All methods are reported as safe, but some have higher costs, and some prolong the operation. In this article, we reviewed clinical and experimental studies on different methods of stump closure, and we tried to compare the benefit of these methods over others.

Objective: The citation number of an article gives us information about its quality and contribution to science. In this article, we aimed to find the most frequently cited article in general surgery from Turkey, and evaluate how these articles in general surgery contributed to the world literature., Material and Methods: We used the science citation index expanded database to find the most frequently cited articles in general surgery from Turkey., Results: Among the 52 articles found, the most common subjects were as follows: hydatid cyst (21.1%), pilonidal disease (15.4%), laparoscopic operations (15.4%), breast diseases (11.5%), and inguinal hernia (7.7%). Two articles were cited in more than 100 articles. Furthermore, 48.8% of the articles were published from three major cities. Most articles were published between 2000 and 2004, and 65.4% of articles were case series., Conclusion: Most of the cited articles were about hydatid cyst and pilonidal disease, which are more common in the Turkish population compared with other countries. Evaluation of most cited articles is important to identify the fields in which Turkey contributes to the world literature.

Objective: Vascular sealing devices (VSD) can be safely used in thyroid surgery. The purpose of this survey was to investigate general surgeons' approach to the use of VSD in thyroid surgery in Turkey., Material and Methods: A questionnaire containing 10 items was prepared and announced via the Dialogue in Endocrinology Society website. The results were then analyzed., Results: Fifty surgeons (65.8%) stated that they always use VSD, 20 (26.3%) stated that they sometimes use these devices and six (7.9%) declared that they never use VSD. Thirty-six surgeons (47.4%) reported that they use ligation all the time, and 42 (55.3%) stated that upper pole vessels should be ligated at least once. Twenty two point four percent of the responders stated that they faced a complication, which they thought was related to VSD., Conclusion: The vast majority of surgeons routinely uses VSD and accepts it as a safe tool. However, the observed complication rate was very high.