I've read that plastic surgery residents may practice their craft on decapitated heads...
Is that actually true? I can't believe it. What is it like?
Not a plastic surgery resident here, but I can comment on neurosurgery.
We operate on live human heads for a living, and there are a lot of important things in the head that we do not want to injury with our surgery. Part of learning operative techniques, and better understanding operative anatomy, is performing the surgery, or a dissection of the anatomical region, on a cadaver.
Is this done for every case by every resident?
No.
Does it help, when it is done?
Undoubtedly, yes.
Why do we use decapitated heads?
There are several reasons. The number of people who donate their bodies for educational purposes is relatively limited and well preserved cadavers are not cheap. As neurosurgeons, we focus on brain and spine surgeries, so when we do cadaver labs, we use heads or torsos. If we use a head, the arms, legs, and torso can be used by other surgeons in orthopaedics, podiatry, cardiac, vascular, and general surgery for their needs. It is less wasteful this way as every cadaver is utilized to the maximum extent e.g. I would have no use for cadaver legs but an orthopedic surgeon or podiatrist would.
What is it like?
Every surgeon has completed medical school, the majority of which have a cadaver based gross anatomy course. Using a cadaver head in lab is similar to that, but I always found it much more educational, because our labs are set up with better equipment. I can position like I would in the operating room and use the same drills I would for surgery. The soft tissue is often much more brittle due to the fixation, and it doesn't bleed like living tissue would. For cranial work, however, especially skull base, cadaver work is the best way to understand the anatomical relationships. This allows you to do the surgery in a living person, safely, and without harm.
