Monday 17 October 2011

Emedinews:Insights on Medicolegal issues:Clinical and forensic autopsies is overlapping to each other

• Whether clinical/pathological or forensic, autopsy is nothing but medical study of a dead body and is carried out for enhancing clinical findings and its correlation with patient clinical manifestation during the treatment or understanding some unrevealed aspect of disease/diagnose the disease which has caused the mortality when ante-mortem efforts have failed or the autopsy/disease process in situ, thus enriching medical knowledge findings may be simultaneously used for medico-legal purpose
• Postmortem examination of a dead body is carried out to gain insight of anatomy and pathology of corpse and close examination of the injuries, marks of weapon or disease process and it’s significant for forensic application of medical knowledge.
• The procedure of both types of autopsies is same. Autopsy conducted by a forensic expert in cases of sudden/unexpected/unexplained death is nothing but a purely clinical autopsy.
• The opinion expressed on the basis of a clinical autopsy is examined or cross examined in departmental/institutional peer review as the findings and opinion after a forensic autopsy has to withstand the acid test of cross examination by the defense lawyer/prosecutor and judges on circumstantial evidences available before honorable court.
• Both clinical and forensic autopsies have a complimentary role towards each other.

(Contributed by Dr Sudhir Gupta)

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