Guidelines for cadaver dissection in education and research of clinical medicine (The Japan Surgical Society and The Japanese Association of Anatomists)

Abstract

This article translates the guidelines for cadaver surgical training (CST) published in 2012 by Japan Surgical Society (JSS) and Japanese Association of Anatomists from Japanese to English. These guidelines are based on Japanese laws and enable the usage of donated cadavers for CST and clinical research. The following are the conditions to implement the activities outlined in the guidelines. The aim is to improve medicine and to contribute to social welfare. Activities should only be carried out at medical or dental universities under the centralized control by the department of anatomy under the regulation of Japanese law. Upon the usage of cadavers, registered donors must provide a written informed-consent for their body to be used for CST and other activities of clinical medicine. Commercial use of cadavers and profit-based CST is strongly prohibited. Moreover, all the cadaver-related activities except for the commercial-based ones require the approval of the University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) before implementation. The expert committee organized at each university for the implementation of CST should summarize the implementation of the program and report the details of the training program, operating costs, and conflicts of interest to the CST Promotion Committee of JSS.