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BACKGROUND: Current trends in medical curricula are shifting from teaching histology and pathology as stand-alone disciplines. Therefore, it would be useful to examine the potential value of integrating these into the anatomical dissection experience. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess the histologic reliability of tissues taken from embalmed cadavers in an anatomy laboratory. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 112 tissue samples were obtained using standard autopsy techniques from various organs (heart, lung, thyroid, skeletal muscle, bone and skin) of 11 cadavers available at the anatomy laboratory of Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia, in 2019. Samples were prepared using the standard paraffin procedure followed by cutting sections at 4-µm thickness and staining with standard hematoxylin and eosin stain. Using predefined criteria, the quality of the samples was evaluated by two board-certified histopathologists and each slide was categorized as good, satisfactory or poor. RESULTS: Overall, 34.2% and 60.3% of the slides were of good and satisfactory quality, respectively. A significant difference in tissue quality was found between various organs. Thick skin and bone tissues had the highest "good" rating (84.6% and 81.8%, respectively), while thyroid and lung tissues had the highest "poor" rating (20% and 13.6%, respectively). CONCLUSION: Most of the tissues acquired from the embalmed cadavers were of good or satisfactory quality, thereby indicating the beneficial use of histological tissue from cadavers for educational purposes. Future research into how these findings translate into meaningful medical education would be beneficial.
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BACKGROUND: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an important cause of traumatic paralysis and is mainly due to motor vehicle accidents. However, there is no definite treatment for spinal cord damage. AIM: To assess the outcome of rat embryonic stem cells (rESC) and autologous bone marrow-derived neurocytes (ABMDN) treatment in iatrogenic SCI created in rats, and to compare the efficacy of the two different cell types. METHODS: The study comprised 45 male Wistar rats weighing between 250 and 300 g, which were divided into three groups, the control, rESC and ABMDN groups. The anesthetized animals underwent exposure of the thoracic 8th to lumbar 1st vertebrae. A T10-thoracic 12th vertebrae laminectomy was performed to expose the spinal cord. A drop-weight injury using a 10 g weight from a height of 25 cm onto the exposed spinal cord was conducted. The wound was closed in layers. The urinary bladder was manually evacuated twice daily and after each evacuation Ringer lactate 5 mL/100 g was administered, twice daily after each bladder evacuation for the first 7 postoperative days. On the 10th day, the rats underwent nerve conduction studies and behavioral assessment [Basso, Beattie, Brenham (BBB)] to confirm paraplegia. Rat embryonic stem cells, ABMDN and saline were injected on the 10th day. The animals were euthanized after 8 wk and the spinal cord was isolated, removed and placed in 2% formalin for histopathological analysis to assess the healing of neural tissues at the axonal level. RESULTS: All the animals tolerated the procedure well. The BBB scale scoring showed that at the end of the first week no recovery was observed in the groups. Post-injection, there was a strong and significant improvement in rats receiving rESC and ABMDN as compared to the control group based on the BBB scale, and the Train-of-four-Watch SX acceleromyography device exhibited statistically significant (P < 0.0001) regeneration of neural tissue after SCI. Histological evaluation of the spinal cord showed maximum vacuolization and least gliosis in the control group compared to the rESC and ABMDN treated animals. In the ABMDN group, limited vacuolization and more prominent gliosis were observed in all specimens as compared to the control and rESC groups. CONCLUSION: This study provided strong evidence to support that transplantation of rESC and ABMDN can improve functional recovery after iatrogenic SCI. The transplanted cells showed a beneficial therapeutic effect when compared to the control group.
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OBJECTIVES: Abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) is a leading cause of hysterectomies, the cause of which is usually diagnosed with preoperative endometrial sampling. We planned this study to assess the accuracy of diagnosing the histologic patterns of endometrium in the preoperative sample in reference to the final histologic diagnosis in hysterectomy. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed medical charts between January 2011 and December 2015 at a tertiary hospital in Saudi Arabia and identified 43 cases of AUB with complete documentation. The histologic diagnoses were classified into normal and benign pathology group (N/B), or carcinoma and hyperplasia category (Ca/H). Measures of validity were used to compare endometrial sampling histological diagnoses to diagnoses following hysterectomy and Cohen's kappa to assess for agreement between the 2 modalities. Results: The median age of all patients was 49 years. Preoperative histologic examination showed 53.8% sensitivity, 90% specificity, 70% positive predictive values and 81.8% negative predictive values, 30.1% false positive rates and 18.2% false negative rates. The agreement between preoperative and postoperative histologic diagnoses was moderate (79.1%, k=0.469). Conclusion: The accuracy of preoperative histologic examination was moderate. Our findings recommend cautious clinical decision making and limiting hysterectomy to women who do not respond to other therapeutic measures.
