A new laboratory at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine is working to enhance anatomy education by producing permanently preserved tissues and organs through a plastination process. A primary initiative of the veterinary school's new plastination laboratory is to provide a supplement to the traditional dissection and preservation techniques facilitated through chemicals. By using this newer plastination process, the lab will not eliminate the need for dissections at the veterinary school, but will decrease unnecessary, repeated dissections by preserving special specimens that are more convenient to study. The primary reason for plastination is to permanently preserve specimens without the use of chemicals such as formaldehyde, phenol or alcohol. As water is removed from cells and replaced by silicone, preservation is permanent.
Plastination is a process of silicone, polyester or epoxy impregnation of tissues.
The process, developed in the late 1970's by German scientist Gunter von Hagens, will not replace dissection at the veterinary school because dissection must be done before a specimen can be preserved through chemicals or plastination. Instead, plastination offers the guarantee that specimens can be permanently maintained and conveniently reused as often as needed. During the plastination process, tissues are dehydrated by a series of acetone and alcohol baths. After dehydration, tissues are immersed into a tank filled with a silicone polymer and put under vacuum pressures that allow the polymer to gradually penetrate the tissues. From there, the dehydration process takes one to three weeks and the silicone impregnation takes three to four weeks.