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Medical institutions are cutting back on cadavers, but why?


 

Before we take a look into cadaver shortages, what even is a cadaver? A cadaver, or corpse, is a dead human body that is used by medical students, physicians, and other scientists to study anatomy, identify sites of disease, determine cause of death (COD), and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. They are a very important tool in understanding how the human body works, and expecially for medical students who are just getting their experience in the field. Live dissections of these cadavers are essential to a student's understanding of how the body works, as the study of human anatomy cannot be fully comprehended from only viewing written descriptions of dimensional images, or using plastic models.


But if they really are that important, why are medical institutions cutting back on them at such an alarming rate? Well it's not their fault, they don't have a choice. Despite the recent SARS-2 outbreak, cadaver donations are at an all-time low, leaving many medical institutions without the proper resources needed to run their anatomy programs. To put the severity of the situation into perspective, the National Universities Commission (NUC) recommends that there should be an average of 8 students per body (cadaver) while conducting studies, however due to the shortage many universities are averaging substantially higher with around 12-15 students per cadaver.


In general, medical institutions have their own restrictions on the types of cadavers they will accept through their donation programs in the first place. A good example of such a restriction, is the use of adolescent cadavers. It is illegal to preform research on human cadavers on donors under the age of 18, as that is the minimum age required to be able to donate your body to research. While from an ethical standpoint this is important, it also holds medical students back from practicing important procedures on younger patients, and therfore limits the exposure they get in that field. Some other common barriers to entry includes the fact that many schools will turn down a body if its too obese, victims of trauma, or have any infectious disease. Despite all of this, it's still safe to say these restrictions aren't the cause of the scarcity of bodies in such schools or programs. It's a global shortage that doesn't seem to be getting any better as time goes by, but when there is a problem, there is always someone trying to find a solution. Synthetic replicas have started gaining popularity, which aim to mimic all bodily functions of a real cadaver, including bleeding for instance. While they aren't a perfect copy of a real cadaver, they definitely serve their intended purpose, and can sometimes do even more than a real body. Unlike real cadavers, synthetic ones don't have many of the same restrictions on creation, usage, etc. This opens up many opportunities for how these models could look like, as well as for the students who get their hands on these synthetic replicas. The possibilities are truly endless.


 

Works Cited:

-https://www.dictionary.com/

-https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949245?reg=1

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