Learning more about illnesses and medical conditions benefits patients too, because it means they'll receive more effective treatment in the future. If your child, partner or relative has died and a post-mortem is to be carried out, hospital bereavement officers can offer you support and advice.
They also act as the main point of contact between you and the staff carrying out the post-mortem. The main aim of a post-mortem requested by a coroner is to find out how someone died and decide whether an inquest is needed.
If someone related to you has died and their death has been referred to a coroner, you won't be asked to give consent permission for a post-mortem to take place. This is because the coroner is required by law to carry out a post-mortem when a death is suspicious, sudden or unnatural. A coroner may decide to hold an inquest after a post-mortem has been completed. Samples of organs and tissues may need to be retained until after the inquest has finished. If the death occurred in suspicious circumstances, samples may also need to be kept by the police as evidence for a longer period.
The coroner's office will discuss the situation with you if, following an inquest, tissue samples need to be retained for a certain length of time. Post-mortems are sometimes requested by hospital doctors to provide more information about an illness or the cause of death, or to further medical research.
Sometimes the partner or relative of the deceased person will request a hospital post-mortem to find out more about the cause of death. Hospital post-mortems can only be carried out with consent. Sometimes a person may have given their consent before they died.
If this isn't the case, a person close to the deceased can give their consent for a post-mortem to take place. Hospital post-mortems may be limited to particular areas of the body, such as the head, chest or abdomen. Some of the reasons for a hospital autopsy can include: In some cases, the cause of the person's fatal illness may be unknown or uncertain. An autopsy can help determine the success or otherwise of a treatment method. An autopsy can give family members information in the case of suspected genetic illness.
Medical science can learn about disease processes, such as atherosclerosis or sudden infant death syndrome SIDS , or the prevalence of particular diseases. The right to refuse an autopsy 'Hospital' and 'coronial' post mortems have differing rules around refusal rights. Hospital autopsy The immediate family has the right to refuse or agree to a hospital autopsy of the deceased.
Coronial autopsy The senior next of kin may object to the carrying out of a coronial autopsy and the coroner must consider their request to reconsider if the request is made within 48 hours of the senior available next of kin receiving a notification from the coroner. The autopsy procedure The autopsy is performed like a surgical operation.
The steps may include: The autopsy is performed as soon as possible following the family's consent. It is performed by a specially qualified doctor, called a pathologist, who is assisted by a technician. The room in which the autopsy is performed is very similar to a hospital operating theatre.
The body is laid out carefully on an examination table. The pathologist first looks at the body, noting its appearance. Photographs and x-rays may be taken. The pathologist makes a cut on the body from the collarbone to the lower abdomen to examine the chest and abdominal organs. Tiny tissue samples are taken from each organ for examination under a microscope and may also be sent for chemical analysis or microbiological culture.
In most cases, the brain is examined. This requires cutting through the scalp and skull. The brain is a very fragile organ — to examine it carefully and properly may take up to three weeks.
All organs removed for examination are weighed, and a section is preserved for processing into microscopic slides.
Autopsies may last 2 to 4 hours. The results of lab tests on samples of body fluids and tissues may take a few weeks to be returned. Health Home Treatments, Tests and Therapies. However, autopsies are also performed for disease research and medical training.
Before conducting an autopsy, investigators gather all the information they can about the subject and the events leading to his or her demise, consulting medical records, doctors and family members and examining the location and circumstances of death. The autopsy begins with a careful inspection of the body. This can help establish identity, locate evidence or suggest a cause of death. The pathologists weigh and measure the body, noting the subject's clothing, valuables and characteristics such as eye color, hair color and length, ethnicity, sex and age.
Removing the subject's clothes, they then examine the body, searching for gunpowder residue, paint flakes or other deposits, identifying marks such as scars or tattoos, or injuries. X-rays are sometimes used to reveal bone abnormalities and the locations of bullets or other objects, and ultraviolet light can help detect certain residues. Pathologists may also take samples of hair and nails at this time.
Throughout the autopsy, the pathologist records everything on a body diagram and in recorded verbal notes. If a complete internal examination is called for, the pathologist removes and dissects the chest, abdominal and pelvic organs, and if necessary the brain.
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