A time series analysis of 76-years of sourcing cadavers for dissection by the Department of Human Anatomy at Makerere University College of Health Sciences

In sub–Saharan Africa, there is paucity of data about the trends in human body sourcing for anatomy teaching and research. We explored the trends in human cadaver sourcing at a one century old medical school in sub-Saharan Africa over the last seven decades. This was a desk review of the Makerere University College of Health Sciences Department of Human Anatomy teaching materials body receipt records. Data on year of body reception, sex, age in years or simply as an adult or minor, and whether the person was known by name was captured. Data was digitized using excel, imported into the R statistical computing environment to generate frequencies and related summaries. The data was converted into sets of annual time series representing the total number of bodies obtained in each year using the time series packages in R version 4.2, to determine the tends. A total of 2,442 cadavers (unclaimed bodies) was received. Most were known (78.5%), predominantly adults (67%) and of the male sex (77%). This data showed a non-monotonic or non-linear trend on the various trend tests (Sieve-bootstrap Student's t-test for a linear trend (Student's t value = -0.61, p-value = 0.54), Sieve-bootstrap Mann–Kendall's trend test (Mann-Kendall's tau = -0.03, p-value = 0.71), Sieve-bootstrap WAVK trend test (WAVK test statistic = 6.74, moving window = 4, p-value < 0.01)). Most of the cadavers were known adults and male. There was a non-linear trend underlying the total number of unclaimed bodies received.