Forums > Social Chat > human autopsy

Posted: 20th Nov 2002
I'm really surprised by this. I've participated in an autopsy (the 18-year-old I talked about earlier), and it's really not all that exciting. You cut out all the organs, weigh them, inspect them, take pieces for histologic examination, put the remaining tissue in a bag and stuff them back in the body, sew it back together, and send it off to the mortician.

I don't think the general public would understand very much of what was going on. It takes a fair amount of medical education to really get it all.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
But to a load of people who aint seen anything like that ,

the whole thing help some odd fasination . It was very well explained by

that guy who does plastination in the body worlds exibition, Gunther von Hagens .

very interesting if not slightly stomach churning

safe :loco;

[garbo]

be excellent to each other: safe:

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
I would have been up for seeing it - just for interests sake.. but I would have needed a pillow or something to hide my face behind - LOL
I am a but squeemish - but I am ruled by curiosity!

I honour you as an aspect of myself..

You are never to old to storm a bouncey castle..

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
I saw most of it, but I did not have my glasses on! The body was a few months old and had been preserved with flamaldahyde (sp?)and so there was no blood and it was not as gruesome as it could have been. It was all kind of grey and green really! It was the size of the organs that freaked me out! His heart was HUGE
I have a couple of friends who went to the body worlds exhibition and they said it was fantastic! I personally do not see why people object to this sort of thing; the body has been given with consent, you do not have to watch if you don't want to. I think its important that people learn about the human body and its innerds and how it works and what it looks like. The person that had the body in life has now gone, and so I think it resonable to be able to use the body to learn.

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
I BLOODY MISSED!!! the stupid prats on channel 4 decided not to announce or publicise it! gits! i really wanted to see it as well!

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
I couldn't understand a word the bloke was sayin his english was really bad.

Posted: 21st Nov 2002

Non-Https Image Link


https://www.guilfin.net/gallery/upload/pxINET1459.jpg


Non-Https Image Link


https://www.guilfin.net/gallery/upload/pxINET1456.jpg
Thats them taking a saw to his head!

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
for some reason the links showed up there instead of the pics for 2 of them, be warned the 4th 1 is really nasty!

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
First of all, if the purpose of the show was to educate the public, then why are they using a preserved body? Autopsies are done on unpreserved bodies because certain information about the organs (texture, color, etc) can only be gathered if the body is unfixed.

Second, why is the doctor who is performing the autopsy wearing that ridiculous hat?

What they should have done is to have done the autopsy without the live audience on the fresh body (because arranging a live audience on the day the patient dies is not easy to do) and then aired that.

As it is, it seems more like a ratings grab than anything else.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
Well, they didn't just air the taping on tv, Mike. My understanding is that there was a paying live audience as well as it being taped...

I think i'd be grossed out to some extent, but i think that it would be worth the gross-out to me to ge a good look at the insides of an actual human body, seeing as how the person isn't there anymore...

But then, i don't a fear of death (dying, yes. Death, no), and once i internalised it that the nervous system wasn't active, i think i could deal with it. And incredibly interesting!

We got the MikeZ in the house, woot!Glue the ham, hat baby!

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
mike, in the show somone did comment on his hat and said he should remove it as a sighn of respect, and he pointed to some picture on the wall of autonimists in the 16th centery wich were waring simular hats and said he was payin respect to them??? strange!

(sory for the type o's im really tiered)

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
Wow! they opeden him up like something they would do to Data in Star Trek!

Fancinating..

I honour you as an aspect of myself..

You are never to old to storm a bouncey castle..

Posted: 21st Nov 2002
Urb, I agree that wearing the hat was flashy and disrespectful. Maybe they did that a few hundred years ago, and such is the transient nature of human style, but even in an autopsy, the focus should be on the patient, not on the pathologist.

MisStix, the standard incision used for autopsy is a "Y"-shaped incision. An incision is made starting on the front of both shoulders and meeting at about the center of the chest (the incision may also be made as one "U") and then a second incision is made that runs from the base of the top incision down past the navel and stopping at the bottom of the abdomen, a few inches above the pubic symphisis (the part of the pelvis where the two halves meet in the center).

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 22nd Nov 2002
seems like you did your homework, mike

Don't you destroy your enemy by making him your friend?? - Rev Bem (Magog), Andromeda

Posted: 22nd Nov 2002
I think the cameraman must've been squeemish or something, I was so disappointed we didn't get to see all the interesting gooey insides and stuff, just shots of the audience and far away shots of men in blue coats chopping up what could've been a plasticine person for all we could see.

But it was really interesting and well worth watching.

Posted: 7th Dec 2002
Never fear Noona, there's plenty more nasty pictures on

https://www.guilfin.net/database/showevent.php3?ev_id=evINET1938


As for the cowboy hat, I think it says it all!

Posted: 8th Dec 2002
Why on earth did they choose to do it front of a dirty brick wall? I can't imagine anything less medical. The wall makes it look like it's some kind of sick medieval torture.

Between that, the hat, and the fact that a preserved body was used, I'd have to agree that it looks like a ratings grab. Not a whole lot of respect for the patient or the procedure.

That said, I've only seen the pictures, and maybe what was said made it all worthwhile.

Posted: 8th Dec 2002
That was why there was such a hoo ha about it cause it ws done in theatre

in east london not in a licenced place. thats why the police turned up and

threatened the guys with arrest.

be excellent to each other: safe:

Posted: 8th Dec 2002
Paddy,

I don't see anything wrong with the brick wall. After all, you're not trying to keep the patient from getting infected!

But having looked at the pictures, they did a few things wrong (probably for TV). They didn't use a proper opening cut, it seems, for one.

I'm curious to know how this doctor brought this topic up with the patient, however. I'd sure have a rough time broaching the subject.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 8th Dec 2002
I guess there's nothing *wrong* with the brick wall per se...I guess it's just the imagery? As you say there's certainly no need to be sterile, but the traditional white, clean, sterile-looking environment suggests caution, precision and medical professionalism. The brick wall is a departure from that aesthetic and I guess it just makes it look darker and dirtier, like a dungeon almost.

Maybe it's just the movies I've seen that make me expect that kind of environment.

Mike, is it there a reason the autopsiers are wearing blue? Again, I guess it's just my perceptions of an autopsy given what I've seen in the movies, but I'd have expected them to be wearing white.

//edit, because of all words there are to misspell, "precision" it probably one of the most ironic.

[ 09. December 2002, 06:31: Message edited by: Paddy ]

Posted: 8th Dec 2002
Paddy, doctors wear white coats because if a patient vomits or bleeds or whatever else on them, all you have to do is bleach the garment. That said, white coats are also very much an aesthetic thing. I remember that one of my anatomy professors wore this old ratty lab gown in lab, but when he lectured, he wore a full-length, pristine white coat!

However, these days, when doing an operation or autopsy, we wear disposable gowns. This is because they come out of the pack sterile (they are irradiated for sterility) and then they can be incinerated. They're generally blue or blue-green colored. I'm not sure why, but I've heard that it's because blood supposedly doesn't show up as well on that color. *shrug* The other explanation I've heard is that it's easier to tell disposables from re-usables because disposables are blue/blue-green and re-usables are white. But that's not a hard-and-fast rule, either.

We also wear masks and hair coverings when doing a procedure. The reason for this is because in an operation, we don't want to get any of our germs into the patient's body and in an autopsy, you don't want to contaminate any of the samples that you send off for microscopic study.

Besides, I picked up a little trick from the rave scene that if the autopsy is going to be stinky, I'll just put a bit of Vicks Vapo-Rub inside the mask. It's a bit full-on, but it's better than "eau de rotten corpse."

Of course, had this doctor worn a proper hair covering and mask, he wouldn't have been able to show his pretty face on TV. Can't have that, now can we?

Our mourge is down in the basement of the hospital. It doesn't look all that medical; more industrial, if anything. The equipment that we use looks pretty much like what they used on TV (it's not exactly high-tech). In fact, we use kitchen knives to slice up the organs. The walls are white, but there's a huge garage door like thingie on one of the walls.

The other thing that surprised me when I first walked in was the fact that our mourge only has six fridges and two autopsy tables, despite the fact that we're a very major medical center. It was explained to me that since we're not in an inner-city, we don't get very many DOA's (Dead-on-Arrival) and our hospital tends to be pretty good at not having people die, so we rarely get to capacity in the mourge.

EDIT: Some people have commented on the lack of blood and how the cadaver looked like a "plasticine model." Yup. That's exactly what a preserved body looks like. All the organs are a different shade of grey, and the texture is gone.

In an unpreserved body, the liver is a burnt red, the stomach is grey, the gall bladder is a brilliant green, the testes are a light blue/green, the arteries are red, the veins blue, it's pretty spectacular. It's sad that they couldn't have taped a real autopsy on a fresh body, rather than going for the ratings grab with a live audience.

[ 09. December 2002, 14:50: Message edited by: MikeGinny (Lightning) ]

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura