Discussing dissection in anatomy education

for students who only dissected cadavers compared with students who only used computer resources, but reported the best scores for the group of students who learned by both dissection and the use of computer resources. In light of these results, I personally feel that we need to answer the when, what and how of anatomy education. When is the best moment to study anatomy in the dissection room? A recent study seems to indicate that anatomy education in the dissection room is most useful in the second of three steps of learning anatomy [6]. First, students can learn the vocabulary of anatomy (i.e. the names of the structures) through lectures or e-learning. Second, studying and understanding the 3D relationships of structures is best done in the dissection room, at least until 3D software and glasses become mainstream. The third step, discussing how anatomical knowledge can be used to explain signs and symptoms, can be done in settings such as tutorial groups. Furthermore, advocates of the use of dissection in undergraduate education frequently mention the (extra) opportunity for students to work on additional learning objectives, such as professionalism, manual dexterity, teamwork, selfand peer-evaluation, ethics etc. (e.g. Gregory et al. [7]). Norman [8] has suggested that most medical specialists who rarely get to see inside the body may well get by with studying simplified anatomy, e.g. with schematics in textbooks and plastic life-like models, and may even benefit from such an approach. This idea may contribute to the interesting fact that while cadaver dissection seems to be on the way out in undergraduate education, it is gaining popularity in postgraduate education. Next to acquiring specific in-depth anatomical knowledge on the region(s) of interest, the dissection room is widely used to practice technical skills such as surgical or anaesthesiological approaches, performing an endoscopy, laparoscopy, biopsy, ultrasound etc. (e.g. Kshettry et al. [9]). I think the future will show In this issue, Patel et al. [1] ask the question whether dissection is the only way to learn anatomy. The authors discuss some of the methods that students at a non-dissection based medical school have found beneficial to gain anatomical knowledge. In particular, they focus on the use of anatomy videos on YouTube, virtual models and the teaching of anatomy by surgeons in theatre. Exploring other options is not far-fetched when considering the space, time and money required to maintain a dissection room, and the problems many medical schools around the world encounter when trying to obtain enough cadavers. The paper by Patel et al. [1] is another contribution to the ongoing debate about cadaver dissection as an educational tool. I agree that cadaver dissection is indeed not the only way to teach and learn anatomy, but that does not mean we should disregard it. Review studies have compared dissection to the use of prosected specimens (in which students can study whole or parts of cadavers dissected by anatomy staff in advance) [2] and other teaching tools [3]. Although not straightforward, the results seem to be slightly in favour of dissection. However, research has also shown that a dissection course is not a uniform learning experience [4]. Different students have different approaches in dealing with dissection, therefore undergoing divergent learning experiences, which may result in differences in the amount and form of knowledge between individuals. As this possibly applies to all learning methods, it should not come as a surprise that a combination of methods to learn anatomy gives the best results. An example is the study by Biasutto et al. [5] who found better results