HWN Suggests

Bring Back the Autopsy

I RECENTLY attended an autopsy at the hospital where I work, in a room in the basement adjoining the morgue. The corpse, a newborn baby, was lying peacefully, as if napping, on a steel table with rusted wheels. He had succumbed to hypoxia, low oxygen levels in the blood, a few minutes after a full-term delivery. Did he have a heart defect? Had the umbilical cord been compressed? Had he breathed meconium, the first stool, into his lungs? The purpose of the autopsy was to find out.

I’d come that afternoon…

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  Journal of Clinical Pathology and Forensic Medicine

Journal of Clinical Pathology and Forensic Medicine (JCPFM) is a peer reviewed open access journal. The journal is published monthly and covers all areas of the subject such as DNA profiling, forensic toxicology, cytogenetics, vein matching, forensic entomology...

 Failed Autopsies, False Arrests: A Risk of Bias in Death Examinations

Disastrous errors by medical examiners have raised questions about whether they are influenced by prejudgments and a close relationship with the police.

 Piled Bodies, Overflowing Morgues: Inside America’s Autopsy Crisis

Medical examiners provide crucial insights into public health and safety. What happens when we don’t have enough of them?

 The Medical Autopsy: Past, Present, and Dubious Future

The medical autopsy is the most reliable and thorough means after the death of a patient that a physician has to evaluate the validity of his/her clinical diagnosis on which care was delivered. There is virtually no dispute in the literature of its value in the assessment of the quality of care. Today the medical autopsy has been largely abandoned except in academic medical centers.

Articles of Interest

A Group Founded by Colin Kaepernick Is Providing Free Second Autopsies

The examinations by board-certified forensic pathologists will be available for the families of people who died in police-related circumstances.

Autopsy: The Dying Diagnostic

A commonly held belief amongst physicians is that classical postmortem is outdated in the current era of sophisticated antemortem diagnostics.

Conversations with Pathologists

A common misperception about pathologists is that they spend all their time doing autopsies...

Learning to Speak for the Dead

The job requires examiners to break apart bodies: hard physical work. Stomach-turning, too. Dr. Nunez would be on her feet for hours, splattered by blood and other body fluids, at times breathing an unimaginable stench. She could spend weeks, or even months, piecing together clues that might never add up.

Medical Examiners Skip Some Autopsies, As Opioid Crisis Mounts

Offices in New England, Rust Belt feel particular strain amid a shortage of pathologists.

Review: ‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’ Raises Mighty Goose Bumps

Gruesome without being gory, “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” achieves real scares with a minimum of special effects.

The Doctors Whose Patients Are Already Dead

Inside the autopsy lab, pathologists talk about the emotional rewards of medicine's most-maligned specialty—and what it's like to work side-by-side with death.

Virtues of the Virtual Autopsy

Medical imaging offers new ways to examine the deceased.

What Autopsies Can Teach

A decline in postmortem exams has slowed scientific advances. New procedures aim to overcome qualms.

When Genetic Autopsies Go Awry

DNA testing the dead sometimes solves unexplained deaths, but it can also leave family members with troubling questions.

Resources

The Virtual Autopsy

The concept of Virtual Autopsy was born when Tim Taylor a medical student at the University of Leicester, created this site as part of a medical informatics special study module. The project was so big that he was commissioned to complete the site after the end of the study module.

1-800-Autopsy

1-800-Autopsy’s continued success is largely based on the confidence and trust of all Funeral Directors both locally and nationally. With their support, 1-800-AUTOPSY has been given the opportunity to assist thousands of families during their delicate circumstance.

Autopsy and Case Reports

The journal Autopsy and Case Reports is a quarterly publication edited by the Hospital Universitário of the University of São Paulo (HU USP). It aims at publishing original case reports, scientific articles and clinical or experimental studies that will contribute to the development of clinical thinking skills, diagnostic methods, management, classification, and treatment of diseases.

Journal of Forensic Pathology

The main aim of the Journal of Forensic Pathology (J Foren Path) is to publish high quality research works and provide Open Access to the articles using this platform.

American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology

Drawing on the expertise of leading forensic pathologists, lawyers, and criminologists, The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology presents up-to-date coverage of forensic medical practices worldwide. Each issue of the journal features original articles on new examination and documentation procedures.

National Association of Medical Examiners

The National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) is the national professional organization of physician medical examiners, medicolegal death investigators and death investigation system administrators who perform the official duties of the medicolegal investigation of deaths of public interest in the United States.