In recent years, the autopsy was considered necessary only in medico-legal cases, or when the clinician requires it to better understand the pathology and cause of death (with the deceased family's consent). Although it has been shown in numerous studies that the autopsy and the postmortem histopathological examination are the only ones that can diagnose correctly and completely, the autopsy ra...

CONTEXT Despite several publications attesting to its accuracy and value, cytology is rarely used for preliminary autopsy diagnosis in the United States. Postmortem cytodiagnosis has the potential to increase the accuracy and specificity of the provisional and final autopsy diagnoses, increase resident interest in cytodiagnostic techniques, and direct pathologists to request pertinent special s...

BACKGROUND Social autopsy is an innovative approach to explore social barriers and factors associated to a death in the community. The process also sensitize the community people to avert future deaths. Social autopsy has been introduced in maternal deaths in Bangladesh first time in 2010. This study is to identify the social factors in the rural community associated to maternal deaths. It also...

BACKGROUND The pathogenesis of sudden cardiac death in college athletes has not been defined by systematic case identification. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 45 cases of sudden cardiac death were identified in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes from 2004 to 2008 based on an internal reporting system and review of media reports. Autopsy reports were reviewed and adjudica...

The postmortem room is a source of potential hazards to the health of forensic experts, pathologists and mortuary technicians. Infectious pathogens in cadavers tha mycobacterium tuberculosis, HBV, HCV, HIV and prions that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies such as Creutzfeldt syndrome (GSS). This review focuses specif infected patients.

November 2008 393 This month’s guest column is the first of two articles by New York forensic psychiatrist James Knoll, IV, M.D. It addresses an important facet of one of the core topics in clinical and forensic psychiatry—suicide—and post hoc psychiatric/psychological assessment of manner of death. Dr. Knoll is very good at this and writes clearly about the professionally accepted procedures a...

INTRODUCTION Sudden unexpected death syndrome (SUDS) is an important cause of death in young healthy adults with a high incident rate in Southeast Asia; however, there are no molecular autopsy reports about these victims. We performed a combination of both a detailed autopsy and a molecular autopsy by whole exome sequencing (WES) to investigate the cause of SUDS in Thai sudden death victims. ...