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  

gut and that's why I'm excited to take a minute  to talk about the sponsor of today's video, Viome.

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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.