Would you keep gross specimens in your office?

[Mrbojangles]

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Seems like it's a favorite hobby of some of the old time pathologists to keep gross specimens on their own desk in their offices! I don't know how to make a poll but it would be interesting hearing from other people.

I have to admit though that once I wanted to take home some cool pigment stones for a cholelithiasis case.

 

[yaah]

The morgue diener here has an infant heart - she said someone was going to throw it away years ago and she didn't want that to happen, so she kept it. Haven't seen any staff with specimens though...

 

[smellycat]

Resident told me that she had a 80 lb scrotum from someone with lyphadema. She got specimen of the year. Would you keep that? 🙂

 

[desmangt]

Resident told me that she had a 80 lb scrotum from someone with lyphadema. She got specimen of the year. Would you keep that? 🙂

We have a HUGE elephant heart that was shipped to us from the San Diego Zoo for an autopsy. The elephant died and they thought it was due to a heart attack, however it turns out that the elephant died from miliary TB. Pretty cool! The heart is in a big glass case in the autopsy suite. I would say it is about 3 feet in diameter.

 

[deschutes]

Guess it would depend on how "gross" these specimens are!

Formalin buckets vs. plastic/glass display cases, for instance.

An 80lb scrotum would present with a bit of a space issue, I imagine.
So would the very cool but none-too-pretty 19.8kg (~43lb) de-differentiated liposarcoma!

 

[kchan99]

So they do animal specimens at pathology departments of human medical schools/hospitals...?

 

[deschutes]

Not very often, I suspect!

 

[JulianDelphiki]

So they do animal specimens at pathology departments of human medical schools/hospitals...?

I heard that an attending at our institution did some autopsies on some dogs that had died as a result of an Africanized killer bee attack. Not really sure if it was just a personal interest/curiosity type of thing or if someone had requested it.

I think people with an interest in research also read sections from animals used in studies as well.

 

[Doctor B.]

In our medical student path labs, we have shelves of old organs in formalin...it's pretty creepy stuff. None of the staff have any gross organs in their offices (wow, that leaves the door wide open for some pretty rotten jokes, eh?).

 

[Mrbojangles]

So it seems like the consensus is that most staff do not keep organs in formalin buckets in their offices. I was beginging to think that the staff at my school just had quirks 😉.

 

[yaah]

So it seems like the consensus is that most staff do not keep organs in formalin buckets in their offices. I was beginging to think that the staff at my school just had quirks 😉.

Well, tell you what, in the signout room at the VA where I am now rotating there are 5 or 6 specimens preserved in plastic and glass containers for display. One is a cystic kidney, and there are others. But yes, most staff do not keep organs in their offices.

Steven King once was told that he had the heart of a small child, and he replied that yes he did, and it was sitting on his desk at home. Or words to that effect.