Pride, Protectionism, and Prejudice: Overcoming Hurdles in Setting‐up Pilots to Evaluate “Fix for Life”, a Low‐hazardous Embalming Method Preserving Life‐like Morphology

Abstract

About 5 years ago, the “Fix for Life” project was born, which aimed to develop a new low‐hazardous embalming method to preserve life‐like morphology. To achieve these goals, adult female surplus rats from the animal lab's embryo‐breeding program were used for the embalming experiments. After about twenty trials with different embalming and preservation recipes, the promising results generated enough support to transfer the procedure from the animal to the human cadaver model. One year later, the LUMC Department of Anatomy and Embryology decided to use the Fix for Life method as the standard embalming/preservation method for their body donation program and phase out their former embalming procedures based on 4% formaldehyde fixation by perfusion and 2% phenol preservation by immersion.The results of the “Fix for Life” project were presented at the 2014 annual meeting of Dutch Anatomy Society (NAV) in Lunteren and one year later at the annual meeting of the American Association of Anatomists (AAA) in Boston. During these meetings many colleagues showed a great interest in the presented results and were very eager to perform a pilot to evaluate the method in their own institute. This presentation focuses not only on the hurdles to set‐up such pilots, but also the victories once having left them behind.