Solution For Affordable Plastination - First Attempts at Chicken Hearts

Plastination is a superior method of preserving biological specimens for anatomy teaching and research. It offers durable and long-lasting specimens while keeping their natural appearances. This method works by replacing the water and lipids of the specimens with a volatile water-miscible solvent, followed by an exchange of the solvent with a curable prepolymer. This research aims to develop plastination methods that employ commercially available chemicals and instruments, yet could produce comparative results with lower costs to those of the Biodur® S10 method which is the gold standard technique in plastination. Generally, plastination consists of five steps, including fixation, dehydration, degreasing, forced impregnation, and curing. Twenty-nine (n = 29) chicken hearts were randomly assigned to six groups. The fresh hearts were fixed in 5% formalin at 4 °C for 6 days, washed with tap water for 18 hours, dehydrated in three baths of acetone at -25 °C for three days per bath, and degreased in acetone for 1 hour at room temperature (RT). The forced impregnation step was performed by immersing 6 groups of hearts in 6 prepolymer mixtures composed of methacrylates and thermal initiators at 4 °C while decreasing pressure from 760 mmHg to 5 mmHg over 2 days. The hearts were then thermally cured under Argon at RT for 1 day, and at 50 °C for 2 days. Two groups were successfully plastinated with minimal volume shrinkage. Their anatomical features, colors, surfaces, and physical durability were satisfactory. Our two newly developed prepolymer mixture, costing 0.27 USD to produce a plastinated chicken heart, is several-fold cheaper than the S10 technique which costs 0.63 USD to produce a plastinated chicken heart. Devised plastination procedures are currently under further development to plastinate larger specimens (porcine organs) which are more challenging to plastinate.