Cadaver immersion tanks and plastinated bodies are shown in the cadaver dissection lab at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023.
Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Alexandra Wuopio, a first-year medical student at UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, recently spent days of intense study huddled with several classmates and one other person — someone none of them knew but who would be crucial to their training.
The unknown woman, no longer alive, was fulfilling a final wish to help the students on their journey to becoming doctors, helping heal and save the lives of others.
Wuopio, 27, and her fellow students studied in detail the cadaver lying before them. They used a laser pointer to trace the body’s organs and anatomical systems, such as the spleen and the endocrine system.
“It’s important for us as future physicians to be able to kind of make the physical connections not only in terms of what we’re studying, but also respect the bodies and all that they are even after they’ve passed,” Wuopio said. “Kind of bring it all full circle and give us greater perspective on why we’re going into this.”
The UNLV med school this semester debuted its new cadaveric dissection laboratory, and first-year students have already spent about 20 hours working with newly procured cadavers.
Marc Kahn, dean of the medical school, said cadaveric dissection is a crucial teaching tool for students. He made sure space for the lab was part of the design when plans for the medical school’s new building in the Las Vegas Health District were being discussed.
“There’s no comparison with actually touching that texture of the tissue and feeling the different textures of that organ,” said Owen McCloskey, a human anatomy lab manager and anatomy instructor.
Eight cadavers live in the school’s cadaveric dissection laboratory — four plastinated bodies and four fresh cadavers.
Plastinated cadavers are the ones you might find at the “Bodies” exhibit at the Luxor. After people donate their dead bodies to science, they are pumped with preservation solutions like formaldehyde and dissected to prepare individual anatomical structures or organs, according to von Hagens Plastination, a German company that specializes in creating plastinated cadavers.
Body fat and water are then dissolved and liquid polymer is drawn into the cells. The bodies are positioned and the specimen is hardened under gas, light or heat to protect against decomposition.
McCloskey said UNLV bought the four plastinated cadavers from von Hagens Plastination, which uses a process developed by medical doctor Gunther von Hagens in 1997.
Some of the plastinated cadavers have been split open or had areas of their bodies pulled apart so students can get an inside look at the different organ structures. Three are women, one is male.
Other plastinated cadavers are simply propped up in front of silver examination tables, nerves crawling across their bodies like vines and muscles on display for all to examine.
Held in silver boxes that double as tables for students, the four fresh cadavers are not plastinated and instead were preserved with elements like fascia, the various connective tissues, still intact.
“The plastinated specimens are a nice, full-on 3D model showing it in very nice, detailed dissections … but then, they see the more lifelike, realistic cadavers that still have all the adipose tissue, still have all the fascia which is going to be more realistic for what they’re going to see during surgeries,” McCloskey said.
The four fresh cadavers were bought from UNR, said McCloskey, who ran UNR’s bodies program until last year. Each cost around $1,500 that came from the university’s educational budget, Kahn said.
But the price is a small one to pay to offer these students what Kahn and McCloskey believe is an important part of learning for all medical students.
“Dissecting cadavers for many, many generations has been a rite of passage for medical students that allows them to really appreciate the sanctity of life and appreciate death, etc.,” Kahn said. “And, I think it’s an important learning tool for many reasons for medical students.”
Kahn stressed that these are more than preserved bodies — they were once people who decided to donate their corpses to help budding surgeons and other medical students learn how to care for those still alive.
The four cadavers ranged in age from 72 to 94 years old. Two died of respiratory-related ailments and the other two from cardiovascular disease.
There are many reasons why a person might want to donate their body to science once they die, said Kahn. Some people simply don’t like the funeral industry in the United States, but others — like some of the people whose bodies now lie in the medical school — are interested in helping advance the medical field.
Both Kahn and McCloskey could agree the need for this type of study was present in Southern Nevada and that the people who had donated their bodies were giving a “gift” to the medical school that will support students for years to come.
“Although lifeless now, the cadavers all had full life prior to donating their bodies to science,” Kahn said. “And when you talk to people about why do they (donate their bodies), a lot of it is resentment for the funeral industry (and) some of it is also the concept of giving back after you’re dead; it’s both of those things.”
For first-year medical students, the hands-on training can especially be utilized, Kahn said.
Before getting these bodies, anatomy students were putting their memory of anatomical systems to the test using the medical school’s high-level technology, McCloskey said.
In a separate room near the lab lie large virtual anatomy tables with interactive touch screens that can display a collection of clinical images including pathology slides, X-rays and MRIs.
If students really want to get hands-on, there’s also traditional models of body systems and organs — like the digestive tract and a pair of lungs — laid out on tables in the middle of the room.
McCloskey said faculty employed the models and virtual anatomy tables to start off students. Those studies are built upon with the plastinated cadavers until the students are finally ready to identify organs on the cadavers.
It’s nice to have that opportunity to link what they see on paper with real bodies, Wuopio noted.
“I think it kind of puts it into perspective more than trying to see it on a textbook, so it is very helpful to kind of see the connections and kind of see the differences in bodies, like some parts could be different based on your own personal stuff,” Wuopio said.
With McCloskey helping guide the school, UNLV is also trying to get an anatomical willed-body donation program established in Southern Nevada.
UNR is the only place in Nevada where people can donate their bodies for science, but the institution can only accept people from a 50-mile radius.
McCloskey said they want to bring a similar program to Southern Nevada through the cadaveric dissection lab.
They’ve already had 14 people call with interest in donating their bodies to the university since McCloskey was hired, and the school is hoping to have this program off the ground in the next two years.
It will all be done ethically, McCloskey said. All donations will have to be voluntary and decided on by the person themselves — no next-of-kin or others will be able to make that choice.
And more cadavers means that more students — from first-years learning anatomy to those on a physical therapy track — can get the opportunity to learn on the closest thing to a real, live patient, McCloskey said.
“We want to make sure we are learning from (these bodies) the way that they want to be learned from, the way they intended to donate their body for,” McCloskey said. “So that’s why we wanted to do this as well, to make that more available.”
