These teachers never speak, but they are extremely respectable

Audit expert: Qu Bo

Chief Physician of General Surgery, Yangtze River Shipping General Hospital

People who devote themselves to the medical field always regard saving lives and healing the wounded as their responsibility, which is very respectable. However, in addition to these active medical workers, there are some people who are touching in another way. They are the "cadaver teachers" who are willing to dedicate themselves.

"Cadaver teachers" are also known as "silent mentors". When a body donor donates his or her body after death for medical teaching and research, he or she becomes a "cadaver teacher".

Medical staff and students pay silent tribute to donors before body and organ donation and before class starts

Source: Baidu Encyclopedia

In my country's traditional culture, organ donation and body donation have always been unacceptable to people. It is not easy for "cadaver teachers" to make such a decision when they are suffering from illness. And their decision has made a great contribution to the country and all mankind.

1

The development of body donation in my country

Compared with foreign countries, body donation in my country developed later and has a shorter history, but it has developed faster.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, cities began to promote body donation. In the late 1970s, my country began to carry out body donation work, and then in 1980, body donors began to appear in my country. After the 1990s, large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Chongqing began to accept volunteer bodies on a large scale.

In 2001, the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress reviewed and passed the "Shanghai Body Donation Regulations" and officially implemented it. This is the first local regulation on body donation in my country, which has promoted the development of body donation. After Shanghai promulgated the regulations, many provincial administrative centers in my country successively promulgated relevant regulations on body and organ donation. Today, the number of body donors in my country has reached a very large scale.

2

Importance of body and organ donation

Body donation can promote the development of medical research and medical career. Through the body, we can understand the structure of the human body, practice basic medical techniques, improve the practical ability of medical students, and enrich knowledge and accumulate experience for future treatment and rescue.

The "cadaver teacher" is the first "patient" of medical students. Through the practice of anatomy courses, the "cadaver teacher" can help students better understand the physiological and pathological structures of the human body, help understand and identify various tissues, organs, and systems, and help students better understand patients and learn to diagnose. Overall, it can promote the development of the medical profession.

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia, a total of 28 cadaver teachers at Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital have made their final contribution.

Source: CCTV News

Human anatomy is an important course in medical education. Body donation solves the problem of the shortage of "cadaver teachers". Doctors can teach students the basic surgical operations intuitively, making anatomy classes vivid and realistic.

After the body is donated, the new "cadaver teachers" are more helpful in learning knowledge than the old "cadaver teachers", allowing the fields of anatomy and clinical medicine to continue to develop and allowing medical personnel to explore new paths and innovate surgical methods in research.

Source: Internet

Donating bodies to become "cadaver teachers" has contributed to the medical profession, and organ donation has brought hope to many patients.

According to statistics, more than 600,000 seriously ill patients have been reborn thanks to organ donations. Therefore, organ donation is an inevitable development trend in contemporary medicine. Stocks have been established for corneal transplants, various bone injuries, and skin disease transplant materials. The increase in the number of organ donors and the improvement of organ transplant surgery have gradually become important factors in the development of medicine.

3

Technologies used in body and organ donation

When it comes to body and organ donation, we naturally think of an important link - the preservation technology of body and organs.

Body preservation technology refers to the use of chemical drugs and other scientific and technological methods to preserve human remains for a short or long term to prevent them from decaying. In addition to the famous mummies, common technologies and methods include biological (human) plastination technology, human cryonics technology, crystal coffins, spice preservation, vacuum preservation and dry preservation.

Plastination is a technique that turns organisms or human bodies into specimens for permanent preservation. It uses a vacuum physical process to replace the water in the organs and tissues of organisms or human bodies with a mixture such as liquid silicone resin, thereby achieving the purpose of permanent preservation of body tissues.

This technology can preserve body tissues as if they were living, and can also preserve cell structures at a microscopic level. It has extremely high teaching, scientific research and popular science value.

Plasticization process source: fruit shell

Cryonics is an experimental medical technology that has received much criticism and controversy. It involves preserving the human body at very low temperatures (generally below -196°C) in the hope that it can be thawed and revived and treated in the future using advanced medical technology.

In 1967, James Bedford, an American psychology professor, died of stomach cancer. Under his will, his body became the first example of cryonics. Until now, his body is still frozen, and it is still unknown whether it can be thawed and revived.

Source: See watermark

The storage and transportation of organ donations draws on the ideas of freezing technology. When the temperature is between 0℃ and 4℃, the metabolic rate of cells will drop to about 5% of the normal level, and the energy and oxygen consumption of tissues will also be less, which will help delay organ damage. Therefore, refrigeration is used for storage and transportation during organ donation.

Before putting the organs into the refrigerator, doctors will first use 2℃-4℃ preservation solution to irrigate the organs to prevent them from being damaged by frostbite. Under low temperature conditions, cells cannot adjust to the state of low sodium and high potassium on their own, and internal chemicals will gradually leak out. The imbalance of osmotic pressure will cause water accumulation in the cells, causing serious damage to the cells. The injected protective solution can temporarily maintain the sodium-potassium balance of the cells. At the same time, the nutrients and antioxidants in the protective solution can maintain cell survival and inhibit inflammation.

However, this method is also limited in the time it can extend the preservation of organs. The heart, which is most sensitive to ischemia, can only be preserved for no more than 6 hours, while the kidneys can be preserved for the longest time, at 24 hours or even longer.

Source: NetEase News

4

Legislation on body donation

In order to solve the problems arising from body donation and meet the current development status of body donation, various places have actively responded to body donation legislation in recent years.

On March 1, 2001, the Shanghai Body Donation Regulations, which was reviewed and approved by the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, was officially implemented. This is the first local regulation on body donation in my country and is of milestone significance.

On March 1, 2003, the "Shandong Province Body Donation Regulations" was officially implemented.

On May 1, 2007, my country promulgated and implemented the "Human Organ Transplant Regulations", which is a milestone in organ transplant regulations. According to the regulations, organ donation is voluntary and illegal organ trading is prohibited.

The purpose of legislation is to form the principle of voluntariness, mainly based on the principle of voluntariness, and to make active improvements to body donation in our country through encouragement, guidance, establishment of mechanisms, financial guarantees, etc.

5

The significance of body and organ donation

"I would rather let my students cut me a thousand times than let them make a mistake on a patient," this is what many body donors left to relevant institutions and medical schools before their death. On the eve of Qingming Festival, nearly 6,000 teachers and students of Ningxia Medical University held a ceremony to pay tribute to the people's heroes, revolutionary martyrs and body donors.

Source: Xinhuanet

Donating bodies and organs is the sublimation of life. Many medical anatomy workers in our country have donated their bodies to their units during their lifetime.

In 2002, Shanghai established the country's first Red Cross body donation monument in Shanghai Fushouyuan, built the country's first body donation memorial hall in 2003, opened a body donation website in 2006, and set March 1 of each year as the Body Donation Memorial Day. These activities have a good promoting significance for the medical industry and the transformation of people's ideas and concepts.

Source: China Human Organ Donation Management Center

This selfless act made by the "cadaver teachers" has provided good development resources for the medical community and the entire world, and has played a promoting role in the country's politics, economy, culture, society, and ecology.

They are touching and admirable, and they have given better encouragement and support to the new generation of young medical students, allowing them to learn to respect life and take on social responsibilities. In the future, the cause of donation will be more popular, and the medical field will be able to innovate and progress through the contributions of "cadaver teachers", benefiting people's livelihood and mankind.

Source: Digital Beijing Science Center