Why PGI Chandigarh’s ‘donate your body’ campaign holds out hope for medical research

(From L to R) Prof Jagat Jerath, Prof Adarsh Jauhar, Prof Dina Nath Jauhar & Jatinder Jauhar. (Express Photo)

WHY DO MEDICAL COLLEGES NEED CADAVERS

Cadaver donation has been in focus ever since party veteran Sitaram Yechury’s body was donated to the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, for medical research. Since cadavers are needed for precise surgical and anatomical training, a shortage means students now make do with synthetic dummies instead. Even at AIIMS, it is mostly former doctors who donate their bodies. Very few patients’ families are as committed.

Yet, as Prof Kamran Farooque, Jai Prakash Narayan Trauma Centre Chief, AIIMS, argues, cadavers are needed more than ever before, given the evolving nature of surgical technologies which need to be tested before use on a patient. “The cadaver is closest to human anatomy. It gives a surgeon/doctor the near actual experience before he or she finally operates on the patient,” he says.

Although there’s no national registry on the total number of bodies donated, the Indian Express reached out to medical colleges in Delhi and Chandigarh.

PGIMER, Chandigarh, receives around 25 to 30 cadaver donations annually. Dr Rima Dada, professor, department of anatomy, AIIMS, says 70 bodies were donated to the institution in the last two years. In comparison, the Safdarjung Hospital and its affiliate Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College (VMCC) received 24 donor cadavers in five years. The Ram Manohar Hospital and the associated Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences (ABVIMS) received 18 cadavers since the inception of its MBBS course in 2019. Of the 18, 10 were from the patients who were either admitted at the hospital or passed away while on their way to the RML hospital.

WHAT ABOUT AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS?

A part of the reason PGIMER’s campaign is more successful is because it focusses on sessions with common people. “While many people pledge their bodies, often their families and relatives say or claim they do not know about it. Some are uncomfortable about the process and many times, they delay contacting the institute. A body has to be retrieved and handed over to the department of anatomy within three to five hours. So, we encourage donors to make a will in their lifetime and take their family into confidence. And if our medical college or any other teaching institution is far away, we tell them to preserve the body in any mortuary on ice slabs,” says a consultant in the anatomy department, PGIMER.

WHY CADAVER DONATION IS LOW?

Since hospitals only accept bodies of people who have died from natural causes, chronic diseases, age or trauma and not infectious viral diseases, the COVID years saw a slump in cadaver donation. Says Dr Bidya Rani, anatomy professor at ABVIMS, “No donation happened in the Covid years of 2020 and 2021 because of the possibility of infection spreading.”

Although nurses and doctors have donated their family members’ bodies and even signed consent forms to donate their own, a lot more awareness is needed among patients and their families. “There is an interest at least. A government officer recently signed up to donate his body and I expect more people to come forward slowly,” says Dr Bidya. Dr Vandana Mehta, head of anatomy at VMMC and Safdarjung hospital, concurs that regular awareness campaigns about organ donations have helped break the barrier. “Some donors are from the middle and upper middle classes,” she adds. However, the numbers are a trickle compared to the requirement of medical colleges, which now use existing cadavers selectively.

HOW CADAVERS HELP SENIOR DOCTORS TOO

Cadavers are not only used by medical students and resident doctors but also by doctors pursuing MCh degrees and scientists. Professor Vijay Devagourou of the Cardio Thoracic Vascular Surgery (CTVS) department at AIIMS says cadavers are used to teach residents how to take organs out and put them back, crucial for heart and lung transplants. “We teach students how to make a minimal incision and harvest blood vessels, like using the mammary artery for bypass surgery. These delicate procedures need practice and can’t be done directly on the table,” he says.

Dr KB Shankar, head of the neurosurgery department at Safdarjung Hospital and VMMC College says cadavers are a must for deep-seated precision surgeries. “When we operate on pituitary adenoma, a benign (non-cancerous) growth on your pituitary gland, we have to teach students through a dissection on a cadaver. This way we are better prepared to handle any complication that arises during the actual surgery. We get to know how to avoid damaging the arteries and veins when we are approaching a tumour,” he says.

Former AIIMS student Dr Saurabh Kumar, who completed his MCh programme in neurosurgery, says cadaver dissections are important for learning new surgical procedures, including minimally invasive and keyhole surgeries. “The more they train, the doctor will become more confident and easily overcome the learning curve,” he says.

Explaining the importance of cadavers in plastic surgery, Dr Maneesh Singhal, who heads the department at AIIMS, says they are an absolute must for trauma-induced reconstruction surgery. “We teach our residents on how bone, muscle and skin flaps have to be translocated to and transplanted on the affected area. We put a silicone dye in the neck area of the cadaver to differentiate between arteries and veins. This cannot happen in a synthetic dummy,” he says.

Which is why, the decision of Prof Jauhar, former Vice-Chancellor of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University, to donate his body holds out hope. “My teaching was possible because I could access resources that were the effort of other people. So it is only fair that I give back to the world I have taken so much from,” he says.