Cavity Sam

Remember Cavity Sam from the battery-powered board game Operation?  Yes, he had a name.  Amazing the things you learn on Wikipedia.  The game was both fun and educational, teaching hand-eye coordination as well as the different parts of the body. 

The game came immediately to mind when reading an article on Blisstree asking, “How Well Do You Know Your Body.”  The article reports on a study where people were asked to identify their major organs.  The results?  We don’t know our aorta from our appendix.

The participants looked at a diagram of male or female bodies and there were areas that were shaded. The participants were then asked to identify which organ belonged in which shaded area.

To the researchers’ surprise, although almost 86% could identify where the intestines were and over 80% could identify the bladder, only 46.5% could tell you where the heart is and only 31.4% could tell you about the lungs.

Why is this important?  According to the researchers:

Many patients and general public do not know the location of key body organs, even those in which their medical problem is located, which could have important consequences for doctor-patient communication. These results indicate that healthcare professionals still need to take care in providing organ specific information to patients and should not assume that patients have this information, even for those organs in which their medical problem is located.

So much for being an informed patient.

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