A smartphone app for individual anesthetic calculation decreased anesthesia-related mortality in mice

Annually, millions of animals are used for experimental purposes. Despite the recommended anesthetic doses being well-known worldwide, the final amounts applied to mice could be different than those calculated. Here, we developed, tested, and validated a mobile app where researchers and operators were able to use personal devices to process body weight, calculate a master anesthetic cocktail, and then apply the individual volume to each mouse. Our objective was to refine anesthesia procedures using information technologies. Our data showed that the "Labinsane" mobile app decreased anesthetic-related deaths upon using weight-adjusted doses of ketamine and xylazine. Also, we validated that the Labinsane mobile app matched all calculations of anesthetic doses. To our knowledge, this is the first report with hundreds of anesthetized mice records and validation and implementation of a mobile app to solve an old but transversal challenge for researchers working with experimental mice.