Working with dead bodies may seem a little different or weird to some people,
especially if you're new to our channel but the donated bodies that are in our anatomy
lab have taught millions of people about the amazing machine that is the human body.
Now, one of the most common questions we get from students is "How long do
the bodies last?" or "How long can they stay in the lab for? Months? A year? 2 years?" Well,
in today's video, we're going to focus on the human body that has been in our lab the longest
and so therefore has taught more people than any of the other bodies. How long do you think
that is? I'll obviously answer that question but I'm going to answer it a little bit differently
by talking about how this particular body is not only our oldest but also our youngest.
We're also going to show you the cause of death, which was a certain type of cancer
as well as talk about some of the mysteries or surprises that we didn't expect to find when
we first started to look inside this body. It's going to be a memorable one, so let's do this.
[Intro]
So, here is this amazing body that has been in our lab the longest and yes, we will open up the
bag in a second but let's just finally get to this answer of how long is this body been here. Well,
this body has been in our lab for nearly 10 years. Think about that, how amazing that is, how many
students have been able to come to our lab, how many students have been able to view this body and
learn from it on our online platforms. This body has truly reached and educated millions of people.
Now, obviously our bodies have to be fixed or embalmed - some sort of preservation
process to last this long and we obviously continue to preserve and care for the bodies
but I did also mention that this body is our oldest but also our youngest and what I mean by
that is yes, it's been in our lab the longest but this body died in his mid-60s where the
majority of our other bodies throughout the lab died in their late 70s, early 80s. We actually
have one body that she died in her mid-90s, so that's quite remarkable in and of itself
but we have a ton of gratitude for those who donate their bodies to science.
We couldn't educate people in the same way without these donations. Yes, there are a
lot of cool pictures and anatomical software, 3D - people are even moving into augmented reality but
nothing replaces actually seeing the real thing. And speaking of the real thing, let's take a
look at some of these mysteries or surprises that we found when working with this body.
So, let's first start by taking a look inside the abdominal cavity to talk about some of those
little surprises as well as some of the expected abnormalities. Because when we first bring a body
into the lab, yes, we get the age and the cause of death and based on the cause of death, there are
certain abnormalities that we should expect to find but we don't get the entire health history
of the person and so, there are a few surprises that we come across. One of those is when I was
actually removing the abdominal body wall to get into the cavity and what I didn't expect
to find or at least to see is I didn't expect to see this much of the small intestine first
and you might think, "well, why wouldn't you expect to see the small intestine in the
abdominal cavity?" and that's because normally when you first remove the abdominal body wall,
you first see this fatty apron that's covering the majority of the small intestine and that
fatty apron is known as the Greater Omentum and all this body had was this really thin and frail,
you can even see holes in it, the smaller thin greater momentum - I guess not so great and it
was shifted over to the left side definitely not covering up the majority of the small intestine.
Now, if you haven't seen a normal greater omentum, seeing this normal greater omentum will help
this sink in a little deeper. You can see how much thicker and fattier it is, definitely covering up
the majority of the small intestine. Now, this can vary in thickness based on adipose or fat content.
So, as a person increases their adipose or fatty content, the greater omentum can get thicker as
it is a storage facility for fat but we haven't seen one this thin before.
And one of the other cool things about the greater momentum is it contains
lymph nodes and white blood cells. So, that means it can help
fight off and contain infections within the abdominal cavity. Now, another thing that was
a little bit of a surprise, not a huge shocker but hey, we did expect to see a gallbladder when
I lifted up the liver here but the gallbladder was not there and so, this particular person
had their gallbladder removed while they were still alive which is called a Cholecystectomy.
Now, the gallbladder is a little sack that stores bile that's produced by the liver.
Bile is important for breaking down or emulsifying fats during the digestive process
but you can live without a gallbladder because, as I said, the liver is what produces the bile
so that bile can still get to the digestive tract - you just don't get to store
extra bile in that gallbladder for really really fatty meals.
So, let's talk about cause of death with this body. Cause of death was colorectal cancer
that metastasize to the liver. That is cancer within the rectum here
moving into the sigmoid colon and eventually some of those cancer
cells would make it into the bloodstream and spread or metastasize to the liver.
Now, we'll compare this liver to a healthy liver in just a second but first, I want to take a
minute to talk about the importance of digestive health as well as digestive health screenings
because colon cancer is actually pretty treatable if you catch it early. Say like through a routine
screening like a colonoscopy, they were defined concerning lesions or precancerous lesions.
They could deal with that prior to those cancer cells making it into the bloodstream and spreading
somewhere like the liver where they could cause a bigger problem and potentially death.
Now, with overall digestive system health, obviously, diet is going to play a major role,
particularly fiber when it comes to the health of the colon and reducing certain risk factors and
we continue to get more and more interesting information when it comes to the microbiome
influencing our health. That microbiome being the bacteria or the microorganisms that reside in our
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So, back to this discussion of the cancer spreading to the liver
and I do want to mention the greater momentum one more time because based on the cause of death,
we probably shouldn't have been as surprised by its appearance. This being a digestive system
cancer and often times when people are undergoing cancer treatment, they can lose a lot of weight
and they can lose that weight in the form of losing adipose tissue or fatty tissue
so that can explain why this thinned out and even why it shifted over to this left side because
the cancer affected more of the left side of the colon here.
Now, we did imply earlier that when the cancer spread to the liver, that created a whole other
level of problems because the liver is so vital and performs so many important functions for the
human body and if you look at this liver, often when our students first see it, they're like,
"This thing is huge and it is huge!" It is the second largest organ in the body when it's normal
but this is also an enlarged liver because of the disease state and if you look closely at
the surface, you can see some nodules like due to the cancer cells spreading into that liver.
Now, when you compare it to a healthy liver, the healthy liver is smaller and if you look at the
surface, it's more smooth and uniform. So, let's take a look at another little
surprise finding that we observed in this cadaver and that was in the Sigmoid colon.
If you take a look at the sigmoid colon, there's these little outpouchings that you can see here,
here, and even two more there and there.
Now, these little fatty appendages, those are normal and all of us have those.
These little outpouchings are called Diverticula and their little outpouching of the wall of this
large intestine here. Now, you might be wondering is that linked to his colon cancer because this is
in his sigmoid colon and not necessarily. People have diverticula without having colorectal cancer
and many people don't even know that they have them because they don't develop any symptoms but
let's say poop or feces gets clogged in here with other debris and they get inflamed or infected,
then it can cause symptoms like lower abdominal pain even things like fever and chills.
Now, these will often get treated by sometimes just observing and see if the seeing if the
body gets over it then sometimes they'll even step up to antibiotics and in extreme cases,
they might even consider surgical resection or in other words,
removing a segment that includes those diverticula.
Now, another little mystery we found in this body was on the backside of the lower leg. So,
you're looking at a posterior view of the lower legs here or the term for lower leg
and anatomy is Crus or you often just probably refer to it as the calf but you can see we've
got this muscle called the gastrocnemius here and the associated amazing achilles tendon
on both sides and obviously on this side you can see we kept some more skin and some of this
fascial tissue which I'll mention in just a second. But
if you look closely here there's a clear distinction between the tendon and the muscle.
So this musculotendinous junction, clear distinction here, here - muscle, tendon.
But if you come to the other side, pretty good on that lateral belly over here on the left side but
when you get to the medial belly if you noticed, that medial belly of the gastroc is scrunched
upward when compared to the other side and if you look closely at that tissue, it's kind of bla
because blah it's a technical term and what blah really means is that was actually scar tissue.
Now, that scar tissue likely came from a partially torn achilles tendon that we didn't expect to
find. Now, you may not be appreciating it as much as I was when I was doing the dissection
because normally when you remove fascia from over the top of the tendon, it's pretty easy to
peel that apart. There might be some few myofascial adhesions that you have to work
apart but, when I got to right here, that fascia was completely fused to the tendon.
Now, fascia is designed to wrap and contain a group of muscles but still allow for them to
slide and glide. So, if this hand is like the fascia and this hand is the muscle,
we'd want that muscle to still be able to slide and glide under the fascia during its
different phases of contraction. But on this leg, the fascia being fused,
every time this person contracted their muscles and got up on their tippy toes,
it tugged and yanked on that fascia rather than that nice loosey goosey sliding and gliding. So,
it likely gave a sensation of tightness and may have even decreased some of his range of motion.
Thanks for watching everyone. Hopefully learn something new and amazing about the
human body as well as how incredible it is that people donate their bodies
to science and education. We couldn't do this without them and we are forever grateful
for people who choose to donate so that we can continue to learn more about the body.
If you're interested in checking out Viome, that link is in the description below.
We love reading through you guys' comments, so feel free to comment in the comment section
and if you feel so inclined, like and subscribe and we'll see you in the next video.