Hortsch, Michael, Girao-Carmona, Virginia Claudia Carneiro, Leite, Ana Caroline Rocha de Melo, Nikas, Ilias P, Gatumu, Margaret K., Koney, Nii Koney-Kwaku, Arko-Boham, Benjamin, Yohannan, Doris, Oommen, Aswathy Maria, Li, Yan, Yang, Jian, Trollope, Alexandra, Meyer, Amanda, and Van Nuland, Sonya E. (2026) Response to: "Clarifying the position of Iran in global anatomy education: Historical development, curriculum integration, and professional practice". Anatomical Sciences Education. (In Press)

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Abstract

To the Editor, We very much appreciate the Letter to the Editor by Dr. Hassanzadeh and his colleagues1 and their positive assessment of our overview outlining the current state of global anatomical science education that was published in the 2026 January issue of Anatomical Sciences Education.2 The authors of the letter bring up two valid points. Including West Asian/Middle Eastern countries such as Iran in the South Asia segment was an organizational choice to keep our manuscript manageable and organized. This classification was not intended to imply a shared geographic, cultural, historical, or educational identity across the countries discussed in that and other sections. As we are pointing out in our manuscript, there are considerable differences in how the anatomical sciences are taught within continents and often within single countries. With over 210 different countries and territories recognized by the United Nations,3, 4 it was beyond the scope of our review to report details about anatomical education for more than a few selected examples.

We are glad that the authors added more information about the status of anatomical education in Iran. Persia, now Iran, has been an important contributor to the anatomical sciences for more than a millennium, and without Persian and Arab scholars during the Islamic Golden Age, like Abu Bakr al-Razi aka Rhazes, Ibn Sina aka Avicenna, Mansur ibn Ilyas Shirazi, and others, a lot more anatomical knowledge from antiquity might have been permanently lost.5, 6 As Dr. Hassanzadeh and colleagues are pointing out in their letter, this pioneering legacy now extends to the educational system in present day Iran.7-9

Also, we tried to include references to non-English language publications in our review whenever that was possible. Not having a Persian/Farsi-speaking author on our team, we were limited in evaluating this segment of the published literature. There are likely to be more non-English language publications featuring anatomical education that were not mentioned in our overview. This should be a call to action for colleagues in those countries to add missing pieces to our review by submitting a letter to the editor or a full manuscript. In addition, education in the anatomical sciences is an ever-changing topic and our snapshot findings will need updates in the future.

Item ID:	94046
Item Type:	Article (Commentary)
ISSN:	1935-9780
Keywords:	anatomy, education, curriculum
Copyright Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). Anatomical Sciences Education published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association for Anatomy. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Date Deposited:	23 Sep 2026 05:24
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3903 Education systems > 390303 Higher education @ 100%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1601 Learner and learning > 160102 Higher education @ 100%
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