The Knee Learning Resource
A cadaver is a dead body. This term is generally used for bodies which have been donated to medicine or science.
Donors offer their bodies altruistically to be used to benefit others. Many are used for dissection in medical schools and for practising surgical procedures like arthroscopy. Those which are used for transplants become caught up in a complex and expensive business of tissue preparation and marketing.
Major organ transplants (eg heart, kidneys, liver) are usually 'harvested' from donors who are alive but brain dead and on life-support machines, and the surgical team and families have to be prepared for the very emotional issues involved. Other less sensitive body parts (eg cornea, tendon) may be harvested from people who carried donor cards, and were already clinically dead at the time of tissue harvest.
Stored cadaver materials are taken from many parts of the body and are stored by methods such as cryo-preservation and lyophilisation.
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