Learning From the Dead

Question 1

State the types of autopsies conducted today

Answer 1

Medicolegal (coroner’s autopsy)
Forensic
Consent (hospital)

Question 2

Describe medicolegal autopsy

Answer 2

Performed on behalf of HM coroner
No legal consent needed
Decreased unknown or not seen by a doctor within 14 days of death
Attending doctor not able to give cause of death
Obvious unnatural death
Death related to occupational disease or accident
Each of people who are in care of the state (prisoners, detained in hospital under mental health act)

Question 3

Describe use of forensic autopsy

Answer 3

Investigate suspicious death

Question 4

Describe use of consent autopsy

Answer 4

Consent from next of kin

May limit examination - only open specific areas of the body

Question 5

Discuss what is involved in an autopsy

Answer 5

History - often limited in coroner’s cases
External examination - natural disease, injury, medical intervention
Internal examination - all systems usually, limited in consent cases
Additional testing
Histology - for making and confirming a diagnosis
Toxicology - blood, urine, bile, therapeutic drugs, recreational drugs
Biochemistry - diabetic ketoacidosis, alcoholic ketoacidosis, renal failure
Ketoacidosis - abnormally high concentration of ketones
Microbiology - fungi, bacteria, virus
Genetic - DNA fingerprinting
Neuropathy autopsy - trauma, neurodegenerative disease
Paediatric autopsy - deaths in utero, prenatal deaths, death in infancy, parents want to know for ‘next time’
Forensic autopsy