94PERCEPTIONS OF CADAVERIC DISSECTION IN ANATOMY TEACHING AT K. J. SOMAIYA MEDICAL COLLEGE, MUMBAI.For years together now, dissection of the human body has been globally considered an essential part of medical training. It is designed to give medical students, a hands on view of the interior of the body. It is a known fact that a good medical or surgical practice can only be achieved, if the foundation on which it is based, is strong. This firm foundation comes from an adequate and very exact knowledge of human anatomy and this can be derived only from learning human dissection. Thus dissection training has remained an important part of medical curriculum.Lately however, this trend has been changing. Anatomists, world over are lamenting about medical students’ lack of interest in dissections and its diminishing utilisation in medical studies. Because of high cost of cadavers and shortage of time, some medical schools in Europe and US have abandoned dissection and moved to cadaverless anatomy. However, some persist on cadaver-oriented anatomy to teach basic constructional principles of human body through dissection. The objective of our study was to find out the reasons why some medical students avoid dissections. We started this study with the hypothesis that in spite of the very important role of dissections in understanding human body, relatively little percentage of medical students are getting benefited from it and appreciating cadavers as their first patients.drspsawant@gmail.comResearch522015Anatomy,Dissection,Cadaver,Questionnaire,Medical student,FormaldehydeSharadkumar Pralhad SawantProfessor and Head, Department of Anatomy, K.J.Somaiya Medical College, Somaiya Ayurvihar, Eastern Express Highway, Sion, Mumbai-400 022, Maharashtra, India