Saturday 15 October 2011

Emedinews:Insights on Medicolegal issues:Obscure autopsy is important in cases where no significant finding are discovered in autopsy


Negative autopsy is very useful in cases where there is no adequate history of death. When in a postmortem examination, if despite all efforts i.e. macroscopic or gross, microscopic chemical and toxicological result could not give conclusive information regarding cause, manner or other required medicolegal aspect of death, then obscure or negative autopsy may provide logical conclusion.
• Death from fear/fright or shock/cases of post fracture air embolism
• Death due to lesion in neck as diphtheria, laryngeal bronchitis/swelling of glottis or chocking on food
• Cases like brown atrophy of heart associated with starvation, asthma or cancer
• Sickle cell disease/Lesion of adrenal gland/hemorrhage or destruction by tumor
• I have found negative autopsy to be very informative in death due to distal coronary artery occlusion or coronary arteries spasm

(Contributed by Dr Sudhir Gupta)

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