Autopsy
Forensic Medicine · Pathology · Medicine
Say it: AW-top-see
An autopsy is a medical examination of a body after death, inside and out, to find the cause of death and study the effects of disease or injury.
Also: postmortem examination, post-mortem, necropsy, autopsies
Definition
What is an autopsy?
An autopsy, also called a postmortem examination, is a systematic examination of a dead body by a pathologist, a doctor trained to diagnose disease from organs and tissues. It begins with a careful external inspection and usually continues with an internal examination of the organs, followed by microscopic study of tissue samples and, when needed, tests for drugs, poisons or infection.
There are two broad kinds. A clinical, or hospital, autopsy is usually requested by doctors or the family after an apparently natural death, with consent, to confirm the diagnosis, explain what happened and check the quality of medical care. A forensic, or medicolegal, autopsy is ordered by legal authorities, such as a coroner or medical examiner, when a death is sudden, unexplained, violent or suspicious, and it aims to establish the cause and manner of death.
Autopsies regularly uncover important conditions that were missed during life, improve the accuracy of death certificates and disease statistics, supply tissue for research and teach medical students. Even so, hospital autopsy rates have fallen steeply in many countries, while forensic autopsies have held steady. Less invasive alternatives that combine CT or MRI scans with needle biopsies are being developed.
Word parts
Where does the word “autopsy” come from?
- auto-
- selfGreek autos
- -opsy
- sight, viewingGreek opsis, via autopsia (seeing with one's own eyes)
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Terms that go with it
- Postmortem intervalThe postmortem interval is the time since a person died, estimated by forensic experts from body changes, temperature, insects and other evidence.
- Rigor mortisRigor mortis is the temporary stiffening of muscles after death, caused by loss of ATP, which leaves myosin locked onto actin until muscle proteins break down.
- NecrosisNecrosis is the unplanned death of cells or tissue caused by injury, infection, toxins or loss of blood supply, and it usually triggers inflammation.
- InfarctionInfarction is the death of an area of tissue, called an infarct, caused by a sudden loss of its blood supply, as in a heart attack or a stroke.
- EpidemiologyEpidemiology is the study of how often diseases and other health events occur in populations, what causes them and how they can be controlled.
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Checked against
Written for biofideX in plain words, after checking these references:
- NCBI MeSH: Autopsy
- NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms: postmortem
- Blokker et al. (2017), Autopsy rates in the Netherlands: 35 years of decline, PLoS ONE
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