It's not abnormal because it's small and deflated. It's abnormal for another reason.
Now, this fissure here, or this crack separates the lobes here and for those of you who've maybe
taken an anatomy class you've already figured out what's abnormal about this right lung.
Welcome to the lab everyone!
Today we're going to show you five crazy things we found in dead bodies, or in other words,
things we found that we didn't expect to find while doing anatomical dissections.
You see, when we get a donated body we don't get every little detail about their
health history like previous surgeries, previous trauma, or chronic conditions.
We mostly just get age, gender, and cause of death. So,
that means any anatomical abnormality that wasn't related to their death
we wouldn't know about unless we explored the body through anatomical dissection.
So, let's take a look at those five things we found in the bodies.
From abnormal lungs, ovaries, to even what cancer can do to surrounding tissues.
In other words, let's get ready for this abnormal anatomical awesomeness!
So, before we start I want to say thank you to all those who donate their bodies to science.
We could not educate students in the same way without these amazing anatomical gifts.
Sometimes they give us more than we bargained for by showing us some cool anatomical abnormalities.
Let's start with our first one, well counting backwards at number five with the "Abnormal Lung."
So, take a look at this lung here, this is a right lung,
this is the back side of the lung, the lateral aspect or the side of the lung.
Here's the anterior aspect of the lung.
So, if I held it up to me,
it would essentially sit like so, with the back side and the front here.
Now, it's not abnormal because it's small and deflated, it's abnormal for another reason.
Now, this fissure here or this crack separates the lobes here and for those of you who've maybe
taken an anatomy class you've already figured out what's abnormal about this right lung.
But if you haven't, let's jump over to the other body to show you a normal right lung.
So, here's our thoracic cavity or our chest cavity dissection.
Here you can see the heart and its pericardial sac and all of its glory here.
But, let's take a look at the lungs.
Everybody always loves poking the lungs because
they're nice and gushy and elastic and feel with air.
Obviously they're deflated,
but this right lung you can see again those divisions or these fissures or cracks.
Here's one lobe, a second lobe and if I remove these out of the way you can see
a third lobe down where my pointer finger is wiggling.
Over here on the left side you've got a left lung with one lobe.
If I remove that down in there you can see the second lobe.
So, hopefully seeing the normal right lung gave you a hint as to what's different about this one.
This right lung is missing a lobe.
It only has one, and two lobes.
Normally right lungs have three lobes, and left lungs have two lobes.
But, this one was an anatomical variant. Now this person didn't have a lobectomy.
We didn't see any surgical incisions when we did the exploring,
and these lungs filled the entirety of the right side of the thoracic cavity.
So, it's pretty crazy to think about that sometimes you can get
a variation in lobe numbers from person to person.
Now what some of you may be wondering is if it's missing a lobe
would that affect lung capacity and again if this is how the person
came and the lobe wasn't removed surgically the answer is not so much.
The important part is the tubing inside.
So again if we take a look at this abnormal lung, here, you can see some of this tubing
that I've exposed by removing some of the lung tissue from this lobe.
But, that tubing that's going down and branching into the lung tissue
these start as Bronchopulmonary Buds or little tiny buds of tubes.
While you're developing inside mom and those tubes continue to grow and develop and as
they're growing and developing the lung tissue starts to wrap around these tubes
and certain fusions take place between the lung tissue
and the various tubes, which starts dividing the lung into different lobes.
Now as long as the person has all the Bronchopulmonary Segments or this tubing
going within the lobes that they have, they're going to have lung capacity that is sufficient.
They found variation in different cadaver labs;
they've seen right lungs with two lobes and even four lobes.
In some cases they found left lungs with even three lobes and so,
those variations again as long as they have the proper Bronchopulmonary Segments
or the proper tubing going into the variations in the lobes that they have they should be okay.
But, again most of us come with three on the right and two on the left.
Number four, the structure that we started to refer to as the "Stuck Achilles."
For this one let's look at a normal achilles first and then we'll go to the abnormal one.
So as you can see we're looking at the posterior
aspect of the lower leg or the back of the lower calf.
We often refer to this as the calf muscle but it's technically called the Gastrocnemius muscle.
Then, you can see this amazing tendon called the Achilles Tendon.
Technically the Calcaneal Tendon.
But, this is the largest and strongest tendon in the human body, and if we get close you
might be able to see a fiber orientation of these collagen fibers going in all the same direction.
Because this tendon is made of a dense regular connective tissue.
Which is really important to help it be strong in this one direction.
Again regular because the collagen fibers are aligned in these rows
here and when this muscle contracts the tendon therefore pulls the heel upward.
Now look at how glossy this tendon is up at the Musculotendinous Junction.
Here you're not going to see that on the abnormal Achilles that we're going to show you.
We're going to look up here and see a major difference on the abnormal one in just a second.
So the abnormal Achilles is from the same body, just the different leg,
and you can see it looks relatively normal from here to here.
Even when we get up to that Musculotendinous
Junction you can see that nice distinction between the tendon and the muscle belly.
But if I rotate it towards you a little bit, here, if you look closely it’s nice and glossy
and then it starts to change a little bit and the tissue looks a little bit more frayed.
I always say "goopy" to people, and the muscle belly of the medial aspect of
that calf muscle is scrunched upward more so than it normally would be.
This is all scar tissue from a partially ruptured Achilles tendon.
Now one of the things that was also interesting about this is
when I was dissecting this tissue I had to reference this tissue here.
This white tissue is called Fascia.
Now keep in mind that Fascia would continue down like a sleeve over the muscle and the tendons
here, and usually I can slide Fascia up and down underneath it relatively easily and gently.
I can peel it away from the muscle or the tendon. But in the case of right here where the
Achilles tendon was ruptured it was totally fused with that scar tissue.
So I want you to think about that Fascia surrounds muscles
but the muscles still need to slide and glide underneath the Fascia.
In the case where this guy was ruptured here, the Fascia
and the tendon or the scar tissue from that partial rupture was fused together.
Now think about what would happen every time the guy got up on his tippy toes.
It would try to slide and glide, it would be stuck to the Fascia.
So we would yank on it.
Likely this person when they were living had some tension and tightness going on there
and even probably some limited range of motion.
Now most people, when they rupture their Achilles they tend to do it lower down,
which tends to be a little bit less of a complicated surgical procedure
because you can stitch tendon and tendon together.
When you rupture close to the Musculotendinous junction that
can be a little bit more of a complex surgical procedure.
But in the case of this particular person likely
didn't have surgery because again a partial rupture.
But it healed with all that excessive scar tissue.
Number three, the "Mutant Ovary."
Now in order to see this abnormal Ovary we've cut a body in the sagittal plane
or in other words divided it into right and left sides.
One side's going to have the normal Ovary the other is going to have the abnormal.
Let's take a look at the normal Ovary first.
Here, again you can see that sagittal cut.
Here's the frame of reference, for the spine or the lower part of the spine
here's the pubic bone and we're looking inside the pelvic cavity.
Here’s the Uterus and close by we can see the structure that we call the Ovary.
I'll set it down so you can see its relationship in its size.
Here, about the size of an almond, so not a huge structure,
and we know the ovaries produce eggs or in other words called Ova.
Also, release estrogen and progesterone.
But, what about the abnormal Ovary?
So, let's take a look at the other side.
Again the sagittal cut.
You can see the spine, pubic bone, for a frame of reference and again, the Uterus.
But oh my goodness!
Look at the size of this Ovary,
it's like quadrupled in size compared to the normal Ovary here,
and potentially this could be something from PCOS is what we theorize Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.
Where the ovary develops all these cysts and enlarges.
This particular body also died of breast cancer.
Now there's mixed data or mixed literature that says PCOS can
be a risk factor of breast cancer, and other studies say not so much.
But it's something to think about.
Now it's crazy to think of the size difference.
Here again, in the potential pain that this could cause.
So again, women, you are troopers, we love you and you're awesome.
I mean guys could you imagine what would happen if one of our testes quadrupled in size?
We would probably die just from the emotional distress alone.
Number two, the "Confused Heart."
Now, why would we refer to a heart as being confused?
Well, that's probably because the heart "forgot" how to beat properly.
Or in other words there was a problem with the conduction, or the electrical system of the heart.
Every once while we'll open up cadavers where they have a pacemaker
and on this particular heart you can see the wire.
The wire is often referred to as the lead of the pacemaker system
and if I get close you can really see how that wire is going into the Right Ventricular Chamber.
It attaches to the heart wall or in other words, the heart muscle.
So, when it gets an electrical impulse from the pulse generator,
that's typically implanted in the chest, it can control rate and rhythm more properly
for those who have had issues with the conduction system of the heart.
Now one other thing I want to mention about the pacemaker system, is that the
heart of the pacemaker, pun totally intended, is again that generator which has the battery
and creates the stimulus that goes down through the lead and therefore makes the heart contract.
Now it would make a lot of sense to place that generator in a more superficial position.
If say like the battery ever died or we needed to replace that generator it's a much less intensive
procedure or less complicated than having to replace the lead that's connected to the heart.
So definitely we want to get this right and leave that in relatively permanently.
But if we had to ever replace the generator of the pacemaker
that would be a much less intensive surgical procedure.
Number one, "Cancer and the Wimpy Greater Omentum."
Now what's a Greater Omentum?
Well, funny you should ask, because we're going to take a look at this in the abdominal cavity here.
Now a lot of times when we think of the abdominal cavity we think of the guts or the small
intestine that you can see in my hand here. But you would actually see this apron-like
structure draping over the small intestine, and this is called the Greater Omentum.
Now it's not attached inferiorly.
It's actually just attached up to the stomach and the Transverse Colon.
So you can actually reflect it away and then bring it back down.
When we first opened up this cadaver the first thought I had was “wow,
this thing is so thin comparatively to other Greater Omentum that I've seen in the past,
and it's also shifted over to the left side.”
Now to really appreciate that, let's show you a normal looking one.
Now here you can see the abdominal cavity of another cadaver.
Just to orient you this would be your six-pack muscle underneath this white tissue here.
So you reflect the muscle away and that's the first thing you would see is that Greater Omentum.
You can see this one is a lot thicker, does a better job of
covering the majority of the Small Intestine here.
What's cool about the Greater Omentum is you could see from that yellow tissue,
it is a place of energy storage.
Because it's made of Adipose Tissue.
It also has Lymph Nodes to provide some immune function.
One really cool thing is it actually will migrate.
Remember it's not attached down here, so there's some freedom of movement for this structure
but it can migrate to areas of infection or even areas of trauma.
So let's give an example, let's say this little structure here called the Appendix ruptured.
They have seen cases where the Omentum will
migrate around that a little bit and shift over to there and encapsulate that infection
in hopes to essentially stop it from spreading to other areas throughout the abdominal cavity.
So back to this abnormal or the "Wimpy Greater Omentum" that had been thinned out.
This particular body died of Colorectal Cancer that metastasized to the Liver.
You can actually see some of those nodules or those areas where the Liver is unhealthy here.
That's eventually what unfortunately caused this person to pass away.
But in regards to the Greater Omentum with the cancerous nodules in the Colon and the
Rectum here, the idea is it possibly shifted the Omentum over to that side.
Oftentimes when people are on chemotherapy and drugs of that nature
it can cause a lot of weight loss, so that might have also pulled some of the adipose from this.
There is a theory that possibly even the cancer cells may have used it for an energy source.
Thanks for joining us on this tour of five crazy things we found on the human body.
Go ahead and comment below if you've heard of any crazy things that people have found
in human bodies or just for future ideas that you guys have for videos that you want us to create.
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