Dissection Session

Well, they were looking at the posterior abdominal wall, and the internal pelvis. It was the last session before they would have the intact pelvis, as most of them will get theirs cut saggitally, to expose the deeper pelvic structures.

Essentially, they were to trace and locate the acending lumbar veins, and follow them back up to become the azygous vein system at the diapragm level.

Other things, they also examined the lumbar nerves that come off L2, L3, and L4 regions of the rami.
Illioingunial
Illiohypogastric
Lateral subcutaneous nerve
Siatic/Femoral
Genitofemoral

They also had to clean off Psoas major on one side to examine the nerves a little better.
Some groups did it really quicky and left, but it wasn't very well done at all.
And some groups didn't even try to peel off the peritonium and look at the bladder in situ, as with the sectioning, it gets moved....

Even though I don't know my nerves, they are really cool to dissect. White and tougher strands, that run from the vertebral colum in fine mesh and plexes too. It is truely a very unique thing.

Metastatic melanoma guy was behaving, as the structures that were supposed to be there were, and so that group had no difficulties at all this week.
Colonic cancer lady posed slight problems as her cancer growth had fused certain elements of the bladder region to her pelvic wall at the pubic symphysis. And in the end, they had to cut through the top edge of the bladder to remove it from the wall.

Mark's group down the back did some nice work, but we were talking about college's and drugs instead for most of the time. It was interesting though.
Kirsten's cadaver was in excellent shape, and they managed to find both of their acending lumbar veins, and so it was really nicely cleaned up too. Although it might seem biased, Kirsten can do some really good dissection work.

Next week is their last actual dissection, as the week after is their revision and practice spot test session, and then it's straight into StuVac (study vacation, also know as Swotvac by some other institutions).