Anatomy and Cadavers (Full Version)

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JLS_PT_OCS -> Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 10:37:00 AM)

I recently had a conversation with someone about the use of human cadavers in school.

My point was that cadaver lab was instrumental in creating the proper perspectives in functional anatomy and in creating a better practitioner.
The counterpoint was that using a human body for study is dehumanizing and does not add any expertise that a book and a computer model does not, and it had more to do with a kind of medical initiation than anything else. Kind of like guzzling beer for fraternities. But without the brain damage and hazing deaths. :)

For anyone (students, PTs, DCs, Physicians, ATCs, LMTs, etc) - what do you think of this debate?

Do you feel cadaver lab is necessary to learn anatomy well? Do you feel the effort, time, money, difficulty, and possible ethical issues outweigh the benefit?
Is it just a rite of passage?
Could we have done just as well with a good book, and live models?

Thanks for sharing...
J



Jon Newman -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 10:45:00 AM)

I don't know the brain damage part Jason. After hours in those fumes I've never quite felt the same.

I enjoyed dissection and have difficulty seeing the ethical dilemma. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

On the other hand I know some programs can't afford cadavers and I doubt they produce substandard PT's.

I bet your friend will not be attending [URL=http://www.msichicago.org/bodyworlds/intro2.html]this[/URL] but I hope to.

jon



SJBird55 -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 11:12:00 AM)

The 3 dimensional aspect of anatomy is lost with books and I don't know of any "live model" who'd want to be skinned. A book or a model doesn't allow the perception of depth of tissues or the textured feel of tissues. You can get a perspective on the texture and the tissue properties with hands, with scalpels and with those tweezery things. To be able to tug on a tendon and see the response or to feel the thickness of the tissues is a good learning experience. Also, humans have variations in presentation... with 4 cadavers there will be potentially 3 presentations of the sciatic nerve's exit out of the pelvis - would a book indicate the various presentations in humans? Also, with cadavers, one that was in my grad lab had been a convict. He strangled himself - we could actually see the damage he did to himself. From cadavers, depending on the life the person had, the results of that life can sometimes be seen.

I do think that the anatomy courses with cadavers were originally in place as "weeder" courses.

Cadaver labs aren't dehumanizing - technically the aspect of life that is human is gone once a person is dead. Secondly, in the three labs I have been in that have had cadavers or parts, there wasn't any inappropriate joking or disrespectful comments.

Even more cooler is observing in surgery and seeing the vivid color and the shiny smooth appearance of live cartilage... and in some cases the frailness of vessels that get cauterized... and the tenacity of scar tissue that gets removed and thunked into a path cup.

After learning and experiencing what I have, geesh, it would be awesome to be in a cadaver lab again... it wouldn't be for the memorization or the review... but to instead look more deeper into the associations between parts.



JLS_PT_OCS -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 11:25:00 AM)

Yeah, I agree with you guys, and I don't buy the dilemma either, but wanted some feedback.
Let's keep it coming...
J



Bournephysio -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 12:02:00 PM)

I went to bodyworlds 2 last week in Cleveland. It was truly amazing. Some of the dissections were incredible. Some of them were a little odd though.

I think someone has done a study on this and found that the people who learned from cadavers learned anatomy better. Don't know if it was published. May have just been an in house thing done here.

Your really can't get a good idea of how things really move with computer models. I don't think that you get a good picture of how interconnected the anatomy is unless you do some dissection yourself. I also find that you appreciate the anatomy even more and gain more insight if you go back to the anatomy lab after practicing for a while.

Doug



nari -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 1:45:00 PM)

I think that dissection, starting from an entire cadaver, is the only way to really appreciate how the body is strung together. I can't see it as an ethical dilemma; it is just a body past its use-by date. To start dissecting and weeks later, to be still working through layers, is three-dimensional in a way that can't be achieved in models and graphics.
When I waded through anatomy labs, there was one weird rule: as we were all female, we could not have a male body....now that is a blast from the past many of you would find bizarre...


Nari



jma -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 9, 2005 4:08:00 PM)

I agree, nothing is more educating that seeing and feeling all the muscle, tendons, nerves and bones all together from a cadaver. No computer simulation can duplicate that, except on a 2 dimentional scale. "Live models"?. The only live models I have seen were total knees and hips during surgeries from my affiliations. The surgeons took the time to show us things and they were the ones who let us have a close look from start to finish. Thats as live as it gets.



JLS_PT_OCS -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 10, 2005 2:42:00 AM)

When I said live model I guess I meant a living person, not necessarily experience in an operating room.
Anyone out there think that cadaver dissection is unnecessary in anatomical study?



ehanso -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 10, 2005 4:09:00 AM)

Was the person you were debating with in the medical field. Maybe all of the auto mechanics should learn from pictures for 2 years before they are given tools and a real car from a paying customer.
It would be more "dehumanizing" for us to treat patients without touching pulling and exploring the tissues that we are influencing. It sounds like a ridiculous arguement from someone with a non-scientific background. Anatomy lab was the best class in school and I wish I could get back into a lab regularly.



Shill -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 10, 2005 5:40:00 AM)

Real cadavers are an absolute must. Computers are nice, but in no way give the perspective needed for true appreciation of structure and structural relationships. This is a way to cheap out in a PT program. I do get an opportunity to get back in the lab, and its great.



Sean Weatherston -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 10, 2005 7:47:00 AM)

Sounds like that argument is a couple hundred years old...granted with some of the virtual reality stuff that has come out over the recent past, this might not be as far fetched as previously thought, there's no substituting the real thing.

Now all that reading I did in PT school...that was totally dehumanizing. Should be banned immediately!

Sean, PT, OCS



kjhsjly -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 23, 2005 12:47:00 PM)

Sounds to me like the person on the other end of the debate needs to understand that many of our cadavers donated their body to science and did not feel it dehumanizing.



hmgross -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 23, 2005 2:55:00 PM)

Our cadavers were always draped/covered and we exposed only the area worked on and everyone treated the cadavers respectfully. Another practical reason for keeping things covered is to preserve the integrity of the tissues. I really think it is beneficial to learn anatomy this way, by dissecting and feeling the structures. Also, our cadavers came from a different part of the country, I believe, to lessen the chance you may be working on someone you would know.



Jon Newman -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 23, 2005 6:04:00 PM)

Hi Holly,

I just attended the Body Worlds exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. It was crowed with curious people (with their kids). No draping there. Instead these cadavers were posed and made into incredible sculpture. It was impressive in a way although I'm still processing the intent of some of it. There was a place where you get forms to sign so you can donate your body to be plasticized and displayed (after your dead of course). I didn't see a line.

I thought it was a great way for ordinary folk to be able to see their insides. I heard a lot of people discussing the surgeries they or someone they knew had recently while pointing out just where those anatomical items were.

Butler would have had a heart attack. They had some cadavers with their intervertebral discs dissected to look like vanilla wafers sticking out between vertebral bodies--no ligaments to hold them in making it so easy to imagine them just slipping and sliding around. Oh the nocebo effects that might have been produced by this exhibit. But that's art. You take the bad with the good.

jon



hmgross -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (August 28, 2005 7:02:00 AM)

OMG Jon- that must have been something to see.
Just what we need, something else to reinforce the "slipped disc" model of thinking!



MinnDasota -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (February 12, 2006 5:23:00 PM)

After finishing my anatomy lab last semester, I feel I can finally put in my two cents....

At my school, each cadaver was donated in the name of science by their loved ones. It is a very formal, delicate, and arduous process where each potential donor comes to the lab and interviews the lab directors and even some students (the anatomy instructors make this clear to us on day 1!). So ethically, I believe it isn't much of an issue because of the care taken in the process and the willingness of the donors.

We had 7 bodies and we dissected from the first cut on the upper back to the final cut (removing the brain). We saw many abnormalities and differences in each body (male vs female, large vs. petite, kidney transplants, aortic aneurisms, heart bypasses, tumors, and so on). Gross anatomy really shed light on what the body truely looks like and gave us a very high apprecitation of the human body (on an internal level). I can't even tell you of the rush most of us felt when we disected the heart from our bodies. We all know what a heart looks like, but actually being able to disect it was priceless. Trying to learn anatomy via only a book or a computer model, or even by only prosections....seems boring to me! Yes, it did smell in the lab (which is why we all basically burned our lab scrubs after finals), but not one person in our class passed out! A positive with our lab is that we had access to it 24/7. Many of us would go in late at night to clean our dissections and to study others' cadavers.

Unfortunately, not every school has the resources to have a cadaver lab though. So I will say I am lucky and am glad to have had the experience. I think it is more than relevant in our career being that we are supposed to be experts on the muskuloskeletal system. I think having a cadaver lab (with dissection) is the BEST way to learn anatomy.

Just to add, I had a cadaver lab in my undergrad and we worked with cadavers already disected by the medical school and the experience was not even remotely close. I found it much harder to learn relationships of the body just by reading the book and just "looking" at a body.



ginger -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (February 12, 2006 9:03:00 PM)

Anatomy at Lincoln in melbourne was done at the well equiped Melbourne Uni anatomy lab. Rows of dissection tables surrounded by blackboards , ten or more large tanks with collections of body bits, with a fresh cadaver every term. Fun to begin with in first year, though I did find myself doing most of the dissecting while others with squeemish natures stood back and took it all in.
I eventually found the best learing curve took place by avoiding the dissection and spending my time at the blackboard . We would copy detailed drawings onto boards and rewrite the names with arrows to structures each class. Eventually we'd covered all the boards with drawings good enough to warrant them remaining for others. Anatomy became a pleasure when I realised the best way to get good results in exams was to repeat past exams using my drawings.
One guy did do a few practice drop kicks with a head at one class, messy.
ethical dillemmas, none.heads gone missing one.
students finding themselves lowered into dissection tanks, two.



mcap56 -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (February 13, 2006 6:15:00 PM)

Like everyone else, I had cadaver lab. The instructors drilled respect for the cadevers into us. Everyone took the process very seriously. They even had a little ceremony for them when it was finished. There are some things you gain by working with cadavers that can't be duplicated - absoultely true and I agree with what you all have said.

But I wonder if we are all speaking as clinicians with years of experience behind us and a curiousity that comes with working with our clients. When I try to think back to what viewing some things in the lab were like, it is difficult to remember. Truth is, I could get a lot out of cadaver lab now - much more than I did as a first year PT student.

Cadaver lab is a privelege and a unique experience. But...I do think you could turn out perfectly great PTs who never lay their hands on one. When you are looking at everything you have no idea of what the clinical implications are no matter how hard your instructor tries to incorporate them. And, students soon forget those portions of anatomy that they dont' regularly need to recall.

Perhaps the answer would be a combination of entry level cadaver class and some kind of continuing education program that allows more seasoned folks to come in. We have been considering one for a while. We used to do it for our clinical instructors. The experienced clinicians always seem to be eager to get back into the lab.



AllenB -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (February 15, 2006 3:06:00 PM)

I'm in GA right now. As has been stated, it's a crazy course. What's amazing is your increased ability to memorize and learn new things after the first few weeks.

A few people have stated they would like to get back in there. Here's some videos of a dissection .... next best thing.

http://www.anatomy.wisc.edu/courses/gross/index.html



Omar Ha-Redeye -> Re: Anatomy and Cadavers (March 4, 2006 8:40:00 AM)

Cadaver labs are useful to learning anatomy, I will not easily dismiss them.

However, I too saw Body Worlds 2 recently. The majority of the people were lay persons who were not necessarily learning anything practical that would help others. The human body had become a piece of "art" for others to gawk at for recreation.

I don't have huge qualms about this, but there is room for an ethical discussion around the use of cadavers outside of the educational setting.



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