Exam 3 Flashcards
What is pathology?
Involves cases of suspicious or unexplained death, and determine apparent cause of death, postmortem interval, manner of death, and identity of the deceased.
What is anatomic pathology?
A medical specialty originally designed to study the structural and morphological changes to the body as a result of a disease state.
What is clinical pathology?
The diagnosis of disease using laboratory testing of bodily fluids.
What are the two subcategories of cause of death?
Primary and secondary.
What are primary causes of death?
The immediate cause of death such as blood loss or suffocation.
What is secondary causes of death?
Conditions that contributed to death but weren’t the specific cause such as a bullet or rope.
What is a medico-legal autopsy?
Performed pursuant to a medical investigation of death for legal purposes.
What is manner of death?
The way in which the cause of death came to be.
What are the different manners of death?
Homicide, Natural Cause, Accidental, Suicide, and Undetermined.
What is the postmortem clock?
A principle of sequential changes that occur following death.
What must pathologists first determine?
The primary or immediate cause of death, and then the secondary or contributing causes of death.
What are mechanisms of death?
Physical, physiological, or chemical events that bring on cessation of life.
How much of the US uses the coroner system?
About 50%.
How do coroners get into office?
They are elected for the position.
How much formal education to coroners generally have?
Little to none.
