From Body Snatching to Synthetic Cadavers: The Future of Anatomical Medical Training
Immortal in their death, deceased human bodies provide invaluable information to physicians in training, engineers studying impact trauma, and forensic scientists investigating human decomposition. Beginning as early as 300 BC, cadaver dissections became essential to anatomical education by the 18th century. Obtained from deceased criminals and unclaimed bodies, the increasing demand for human cadavers outgrew supply and led to the immoral act of body snatching from graves during the 19th century.
Fortunately, in present day, the importance and value of cadavers has been recognized by the general public. In the United States, one of the most common sources is through body donation programs. This process involves living, informed consent that the donor’s body will be used for teaching and research purposes. Body donations have been on the rise since around the 1970’s, though the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois and others reported a recent decrease in annual donations in a 2016 article with National Geographic. This decrease, pressured with a projected 29.2 percent increase in first-year medical school enrollment in the next matriculation cycle compared to 2002, has some institutions searching for alternative teaching tools.
Luckily, this heightened demand has been met not with body snatching but with 21st century innovations that provide realistic technology to supply anatomical education to medical students.
Luckily, this heightened demand has been met not with body snatching but with 21st century innovations that provide realistic technology to supply anatomical education to medical students. One visualization tool that digitalizes a real cadaver is the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Project, dedicated to creating publicly available, cross-sectional photographs of the entire human body. Another is an interactive dissection table display named Anatomage Table, a screen on which students can visualize a digital body that can be virtually explored and dissected in 3D. For those training to be surgeons, virtual reality and 3D-printed organs are an important and realistic model to learn and practice surgery on without potentially compromising a patient.
Perhaps the most realistic of these technologies are the synthetic cadavers out of SynDaver Labs. These synthetic cadavers display all of the human body’s muscles, organs, and systems in a realistic manner, both in their pliable look and moist texture. They can be used for dissection purposes or to simulate living physiologies, such as bleeding, screaming, and respiratory and cardiac arrests. Students are also able to see blood pumping through the heart in its “native” environment, an experience unmatched by standard gross anatomy. In addition to their full body cadaver models, SynDaver Labs also offers trainers for suturing, airway interventions, IV administrations, ultrasounds, and OB/GYN techniques. In an article with American Veterinarian, veterinary schools claim they’re also benefiting from SynDaver’s dog model because training students are able to perform important, sometimes risky surgical interventions in a realistic but safe environment.
Aside from their anatomical teachings, synthetic cadavers may be more financially realistic for some medical schools. Though human cadavers only cost 1,000–2,000 dollars plus a delivery fee, the upkeep with the institutions they’re dissected in can become costly. The formaldehyde they emit requires expensive ventilation systems that comply with U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines, and National Geographic reported that the University of Pennsylvania spent upwards of one million dollars to update its already in-place ventilation system. That being said, synthetic cadavers are anatomically identical as well as expensive, especially if schools want to maintain their one cadaver per every four student ratio. Their most interactive models can cost up to 100,000 dollars; yet they are reusable and can be upgraded to potentially represent anatomical variation between patients in the future.
However, a genuine concern has been expressed by educators about whether solely using technology is capable of teaching future physicians what’s most important: empathy for their patients.
A Clinical Anatomy study in 2018 indicated that student performance on examinations was similar between those exposed to standard cadaver dissection or alternative technological strategies. However, a genuine concern has been expressed by educators about whether solely using technology is capable of teaching future physicians what’s most important: empathy for their patients. In gross anatomy, students dissect their cadavers over the course of seven months and hold a ceremony honoring their donors at its completion. In an interview with Stanford Medicine News, chief of clinical anatomy Sakti Srivastava, MD expressed that students “treat [their] cadavers as [they] would treat [their] patients: with respect and care.”
Without a doubt, synthetic cadavers and other new technologies are invaluable for teaching incoming physicians anatomy, surgical procedures, and physiological conditions. However, whether they will supplement or completely replace the current standard of using human cadavers to teach both anatomy and empathy in the future remains to be seen.
DOIs: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000002227, 10.1002/ca.22934.
