Cadaver dissection w/o gloves?!!?!?!

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orthomyxo

orthomyxo

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Ok, I was just watching a dissection video and the person performing the actual dissection was not wearing any gloves 😱. Someone please tell me that that is not the norm. Do/did any of you guys actually not wear gloves?
 
Considering my hands still wreak of formalin despite wearing gloves and then washing my hands 50 or 60 times, and the fact that bacteria can't even grow on these cadavers, they probably are rather useless.
 
What a beast.
 
Ugh that is gross... if I dissected without gloves I would have a hard time trying not to scratch an itch or smoothen my hair later.
 
Now that I think of it, when I took a community college chemistry course when I was in high school, we never used gloves, and we handled some scary chemicals like sulfuric acid which would do pretty nasty things if spilled on the skin. I was surprised when no gloves were passed around, because safety precautions were heavily emphasized in high school labs.
 
that is nasty.my hands stink for hours even when I double glove. I'm sure its safe though unless there are prions.
 
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At my school we all use vinyl gloves because apparently rubber-type gloves disintegrate easily in the embalming fluid. I always wear them when dissecting because the vinyl protects very well against the smell (I don't double glove or change gloves during lab either). Also, I'm not sure what kind of soap we have at our school but I got some of the embalming fluid on the tip of my finger once and it cleaned out really well and the soap smells nice too (it's a foamy type of soap).
 
I personally always go with nitrile.....but like the previous poster said, my school requires gloves at all times. They also say to treat the cadavers with respect, but I watched a prof the other day sit a mans anterior chest wall on his face and ask him to hold that for a second.....Some rules are meant to be broken I suppose lol
 
MUBiomed said:
I personally always go with nitrile.....but like the previous poster said, my school requires gloves at all times. They also say to treat the cadavers with respect, but I watched a prof the other day sit a mans anterior chest wall on his face and ask him to hold that for a second.....Some rules are meant to be broken I suppose lol
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Lol. I think they should be treated with respect, but that's pretty funny.
 
In high school, I wouldn't use gloves if I knew there wasn't going to be a lot of sharp dissection involved for the lab (I did a couple of fetal pigs and a cat). Not sure how I'll approach a cadaver though.
 
theacks1 said:
In high school, I wouldn't use gloves if I knew there wasn't going to be a lot of sharp dissection involved for the lab (I did a couple of fetal pigs and a cat). Not sure how I'll approach a cadaver though.
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Gross. I dissected a pig and a cat and would've never touched the thing without gloves.
 
I've gone without gloves during dissection a few times. I actually cut myself with the scalpel about a week into gross lab. I figured after that "exposure" that going without gloves wasn't gonna be a big deal. Now I only have gone without gloves while handling the tissues. I haven't used a scalpel without gloves. Just blunt probes and tweezers as well as my fingers. Touching the tissues without gloves doesn't gross me out and I literally get elbows deep in the cadaver, as evidenced by my lab clothes being permanently stained up to the elbows even though I wear a lab coat. I know of other students in my class who have gone without gloves too.
 
Ew. I definitely use gloves. Even if the embalming fluid were as harmless as Windex, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to have it on my hands for several hours at a time, several days a week, for a dozen straight weeks.

And the more barriers I can put between me and that smell, the better. Has anyone noticed that now and then you'll just be dong normal things and catch a whiff of cadaver, even when you're supposedly clean? (I was just brushing my teeth, and bang!)
 
If you don't wear gloves, it can be hard to get a proper grip whilst playing lung football. But if it's just a casual game I guess it doesn't matter much.
 
I cant see how this is adviseable precaution when working with formalin. There is no doubt that it is a carcinogen, and thus, limiting ones exposure seems prudent.
 
Mattabet said:
Ew. I definitely use gloves. Even if the embalming fluid were as harmless as Windex, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to have it on my hands for several hours at a time, several days a week, for a dozen straight weeks.

And the more barriers I can put between me and that smell, the better. Has anyone noticed that now and then you'll just be dong normal things and catch a whiff of cadaver, even when you're supposedly clean? (I was just brushing my teeth, and bang!)
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I don't understand the phenomenon. My cadaver hardly smells at all. However, if I wander around the room the odors get worse. Like you, there are times I do catch a sniff of cadaver and I'm nowhere near the lab and not wearing any of the clothes I wore to lab.
 
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Its not the same thing but I remember dissecting and one girl was laughing but soon stopped as a piece of cadaver with juices flew into her mouth. H aha!!:laugh:
 
We had a glove policy too, but if one of mine tore in lab I wouldn't bother to get another one. My hands were going to stink anyway so it didn't bother me.
 
All of the student wore gloves. I remember this one anatomy professor would sometimes not wear gloves and/or lean on the cadaver.

Meh, I double gloved with nitrile and talcum powder but my hands still smelled like formalin. It gets in your hair too. But at least everybody in your class smells the same. 🙄
 
You should be concerned about the fact that you are handling a fixative on your bare skin. Formaldehyde is an additive fixative which means that it is actually going to be incorporated in the surface antigens as complexes. Yes, you will eventually wash off this layer of dead skin, but the cummulative effect of 8 weeks of doing that cannot be good for you.

Plus its a carcinogen.
 
Which video was it? Was the body prosected and they were just pointing things out? Because that would at least be comparatively better.
 
anks106 said:
Which video was it? Was the body prosected and they were just pointing things out? Because that would at least be comparatively better.
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I don't remember exactly where I found the video, but no, the body wasn't prosected. The instructor was making his first incisions. The worst part was when the camera zoomed in and I could clearly see little pieces of subcutaneous fat stuck under his fingernails :scared:.
 
Was it the professor that used a pointer to signal several key structures before sticking his bare hand in all together?
 
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orthomyxo said:
Ok, I was just watching a dissection video and the person performing the actual dissection was not wearing any gloves 😱. Someone please tell me that that is not the norm. Do/did any of you guys actually not wear gloves?
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im a medical student and we only used to wear gloves while dissecting for the first few days. Later on all of us started to touch the structures without gloves. As a medical student, after sometime you wont feel that gross feeling once you get used to it. But our proffessors used to wear gloves while dissecting. And thats good to protect from wounds and stuff but its totally normal to not wear gloves. And also we all had taken Hepatitis B vaccine. so i dont think there is any problem. You dont have to feel so gross. and as a doctor you arent supposed to feel so.
 
ashanush123456 said:
im a medical student and we only used to wear gloves while dissecting for the first few days. Later on all of us started to touch the structures without gloves. As a medical student, after sometime you wont feel that gross feeling once you get used to it. But our proffessors used to wear gloves while dissecting. And thats good to protect from wounds and stuff but its totally normal to not wear gloves. And also we all had taken Hepatitis B vaccine. so i dont think there is any problem. You dont have to feel so gross. and as a doctor you arent supposed to feel so.
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Nice. A first time post resurrecting a nine-years-dead thread with a comment about cadavers.

Also, that's disgusting and my md says it's disgusting from its box in the attic. The grossness has nothing to do with hepatitis, it has to do with formaldehyde and the dead person you're touching without gloves.
 
My friend told me that in her dad's med school they forbid them from wearing gloves because then they wouldn't get the full experience.
 
schrizto said:
Now that I think of it, when I took a community college chemistry course when I was in high school, we never used gloves, and we handled some scary chemicals like sulfuric acid which would do pretty nasty things if spilled on the skin. I was surprised when no gloves were passed around, because safety precautions were heavily emphasized in high school labs.
Click to expand...
I doubt that it was in high enough concentration to hurt you... 1-1.5 mol solutions... I pored some on my skin-- nothing. (look at nile red on youtube... he does a great job showing what acids do to your skin. )
 
Mr hawkings said:
You should be concerned about the fact that you are handling a fixative on your bare skin. Formaldehyde is an additive fixative which means that it is actually going to be incorporated in the surface antigens as complexes. Yes, you will eventually wash off this layer of dead skin, but the cummulative effect of 8 weeks of doing that cannot be good for you.

Plus its a carcinogen.
Click to expand...
thats why they use formaldin-- its still a fixative but its isn't as carcinogenic... we hope!
 
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Nothing makes a Chick-fil-a sandwich less appetizing than the smell of cadaver as you raise it to your mouth for that first bite.
 
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