This is a letter to explain what the René Remie microsurgery course has meant in my career. First of all, I am writing this letter because I feel I must be grateful to this awesome professor. I also should apologize for my English, it is not the best and I am not sure if I will be able to explain all the things I want to explain but I am going to try it. I am a young Spanish orthopedic surgeon. I would like to become a hand surgeon and as a hand surgeon, you should be trained in microsurgical skills. I attended a five-day microsurgery course last February and it has been a great and wonderful experience!! You are trained personally and under the close supervision of professor Remie. First of all, I just can say that this is an absolutely recommendable experience for someone that looks for training in microsurgery. You find in professor Remie an incredible person that makes you feel like working at home, receiving theoretical classes, and performing surgeries. He corrects you every moment but allows you time to perform surgeries. I did epineural nerve anastomoses, end-to-end and end-to-side anastomoses of arteries and veins even performing some surgeries like portacaval shunt. He shows you how something that you thought you will not be able to do (because I thought at the beginning that I was not going to be able to perform such wonderful things in just five days) can be accomplished in a very easy way. Every day that you are taken to the next step, being corrected in all the ways and, at the same time, he tells you tricks to be faster and do the surgeries in the most perfect way. You will get from him all the answers you need. In …

I attended a 5-day course at the RRSSC in February 2012 and found it both hugely challenging and rewarding. I gained lots of practical experience and really enjoyed the lectures. I thought I had significant knowledge on the subject before attending the course but the quality and depth of teaching on the course made the whole subject make much more sense to me. What particularly impressed me about the course (and Professor Remie) was the breadth of teaching from the simple to the complex. By the end of the course I was happy that I had been able to learn about everything that I had wanted to (and more besides). A fantastic course – I would sincerely recommend this course to both surgeons and Biomedical scientists.

From my experience on the 3-day radiotelemetry course, I would absolutely recommend this, or indeed any of the courses to anyone, to those with plenty of in vivo experience as much as those with only a little. The breadth and depth of René’s skill and know-how and his ability to get key messages across are second to none, all within a friendly atmosphere conducive to asking questions, promoting discussions and getting the right help at the right time. A thoroughly excellent course.

René Remie is watching you!” That Is the feeling I still have during my operations…although my 3-day-radio-telemetry course was already 2 months ago! When I started the course I thought that I would never ever learn how to implant a catheter in the carotid artery of a mouse without killing the animal. And now?! It takes me less than 10 minutes until the catheter is fixed in the artery without any loss of blood and the animals are running around in their cage a few hours later. I had to learn not to lose my ease of mind during the surgical training and I always had and still have the voice of René Remie in my mind that takes me back to the important things that I have to pay attention to. I think that he has the feeling to treat every kind of person in the right way to bring him/her to their own personal goal. I also learned a lot about microsurgical suture materials and techniques, ECG- and Blood pressure-measurement, radio telemetry, anesthesia, asepsis, and anatomy. In the end, I can say it was the best way to learn about these microsurgical techniques and I can just recommend everyone who wants to work in a proper and perfect way to take part in one of his courses!

I recently attended a Microsurgical Course run by Professor René Remie at the Surgical Skills Centre in Almere Stad, Netherlands where I received first class training in microsurgical techniques performed on the Rat using a Leica Microscope. The operating station was set up to a high quality and there were many books and papers available for reference. I was initially trained on a ‘Latex rubber’ Rat complemented with lectures received in the morning each day on all other subjects relevant to surgery such as Equipment, Anaesthesia, Asepsis and Anatomy that was demonstrated on a larger than life anatomical rat model. This gave me the background training required so that I could then proceed to undertake the techniques that I had learnt ‘In-Vivo’. Professor René Remie was extremely helpful and friendly and would demonstrate any technique specifically requested. I would recommend that anyone working in the scientific field who is interested in performing surgery or is currently performing surgery on Laboratory Animals should definately attend this course. They will obtain many new ideas with a wealth of information as I did. René’s skilled teaching on the art of performing microsurgery combined with his huge concern for animal welfare enabled me to receive the best training and to become proficient on my required specialist techniques by the end of the course.

I attended a tailor-made 5-day course “Transient middle cerebral artery occlusion in mice” in March 2010. This was by far the best course I’ve ever had. I came with limited micro-surgical skills, but in just a few days I succeeded in performing a very complicated operation. This had never been possible without René’s vast experience and calm teaching style. His surgical capability exceeds anything I have ever seen and he manages to share his knowledge in a highly enthusiastic yet comfortable way. We worked hard, focused, and concentrated in a working environment filled with laughter, praise, jokes, and inspirational conversation. René is not only a super-surgeon but also a wonderful human being with a lot of life experience to learn from. I came with a lot of problems surgical as well as practical and René came with many possible solutions both in regards to anesthesia, analgesia, setup problems, experimental design, etc. For me personally, this course has saved months of hard work and given me a much better experimental setup as well as made me a better surgeon. Thank you, René !!!

The two things that become immediately apparent when following one of Prof. Remie’s courses on experimental microsurgery is his quiet passion for the best possible quality of work and his constant insistence on ”goal orientation”. Later, the participant realizes that this gentle perfectionism roots in a wide-ranging knowledge of anatomy, practical experiences with various animal models, comparative physiology, and anaesthesiology. His teaching can be described as ”interactive ex-cathedra” with an engaging presentational style and seamless transitions between slide-based information and practical, CCTV-based demo’s. Despite the more traditional format, it is complemented with a genuine empathy not only for his students but also for the experimental animals, the former combined with shrewd psychological insights. We were all encouraged to submit, in advance, our different areas of interest and the themes we wanted to figure prominently in the course. This made for widely different subjects of teaching. Prof. Remie’s teaching is nevertheless so accomplished that he manages to interact individually with each student in different ways to expose him/her to the toughest possible challenge whilst, at the same time, pushing for the best possible response. This in itself is an accomplishment of the first order, made even more remarkable by the fact that the class I attended had extremely different starting competencies. The gems of theoretical and practical knowledge that he freely shares with you never feel pedantic but the relevant facts are mentioned at the appropriate moments in a way that you’d wished you should have known this all along. ”Forschung und Lehre”, said that giant of pre-Darwinian science, Alexander, Freiherr von Humboldt. The ”Lehre” is without question already in an elite league of its own; the ”Forschung”, one discovers later, are his own extremely interesting and important contributions to lab animal science in particular and operative methods in general. In …

Prof. Remie is an oracle of animal science. For me, he achieves balancing the complexities of the many aspects of surgery, without overloading you with information, while adding warmth and a touch of humour in his delivery, along with the occasional well-placed anecdote. I have yet to meet anyone with such a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of anatomy and surgery combined with the experience of in vivo research. His teaching style is direct, yet never condescending, and he is a master of patience, which means you always get the answer you need to whichever question you might want to ask about a technique you are learning. Moreover, not only is Prof. Remie a font of knowledge, but he is also eager to provide pertinent research papers and equipment/consumable catalogues for reading around the techniques and establishing your own surgical setup. Throughout the course, Prof. Remie was always quick to demonstrate his care for the animals, in terms of adequate anaesthesia, analgesia and asepsis, as well as the benefits of establishing good surgical technique to minimise unnecessary injury and reduce the number of animals required to obtain results for one’s research. One of Prof. Remie’s tenets is to be goal-oriented: once I had exhausted the queries I had about the ins and outs of the techniques I was learning, it was possible, in the latter stages of the course to fully appreciate the benefits of being focused on your surgical objective. I was glad to have chosen the 5-day course option as this allowed me to get a handle on the core course techniques as well as have a good opportunity to become confident with my custom program of blood pressure telemetry probe implantation and LAD ligation. I left the course with more than I had anticipated; learning extra skills and …

I completed two training modules at RRSSC and only thanks to René, I dare to call myself a veterinary surgeon. Owing to René’s unmatched surgical skills, inextinguishable enthusiasm for teaching, patience with inexperienced students, top level course programs and technical facilities, I learned everything I needed to run a high standard veterinary clinic. This includes good surgical practice – Halsted principles, perioperative care, pain management and respecting animal welfare – as well as state of the art surgical techniques that will introduce major improvements in veterinary medicine. Finally, I could dispose of numerous “bad habits” and replace them by “good behavior” in the operation theatre. Therefore I warmly recommend the RRSSC training to all veterinary practitioners; what is more, I think this training is a must for anyone who performs or plans to perform surgery.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend your Module B surgical course. I enjoyed it very much! It was very informative and I came away with detailed knowledge, to help me perform MI in my institute. The class and surgical room where great, the presentation of the material was easy to comprehend and follow. You did brilliant job with sharing theory as well as practical skills. I was impressed with the organisation of the course. Everything from transport to meals was very well planned. I also enjoyed meeting your family and heaving meal with them. My knowledge about MI surgery was very limited before the course. In only 5 days I learned a lot. This and the materials provided, will be a big help with starting MI in my institute.