Mike, do you know why the practice was abandoned and also what facility are
you at? I'm guessing medical college of georgia but I may be wrong.
I have been working in Mohs surgery for the past year and a
half but before that I worked in the pathology lab doing autopsies. In the
twenty four years I worked there we embalmed every body at the time of autopsy.
Infectious cases were embalmed the day before and allowed to sit
overnight. We are a teaching institution and embalming allowed us to do
more extensive dissections. E.G. leg vein harvesting in cases of pulmonary
embolus. Having an embalmer/diener on staff allowed us to do things like
take the eyes and at the time of autopsy the embalmer could restore the body
to better than its pre autopsy state. We could do extensive neck dissection
and also intracranial dissection, such as the internal carotids (post
embalming)
After the autopsy the bodies were closed and all but ready for
the funeral ( lacking hair, make-up and clothing), this fact endeared us to the
funeral homes and actually they encouraged families to allow for autopsy
consent. The fact that the embalming was provided at no charge to the family or
funeral home was a plus as well.
This greatly increased our autopsy rate. Being a medical
school with the med students participating in the autopsy program to better
study the disease proccess. (yeah you can learn it in a book, but seeing it in
person and handling the organs is a great learnig tool). The organs are saved
and used in the pathology portion of the med school course. (catagorized by
disease process)
Unfortunately this practice recently has been halted, all
but the infectious case
aspect.