Bacterial and fungal co-infections are reported complications of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in critically ill patients but may go unrecognized premortem due to diagnostic limitations. We compared the premortem with the postmortem detection o...
The current outbreak of COVID-19 severe respiratory disease, which started in Wuhan, China, is an ongoing challenge, and a major threat to public health that requires surveillance, prompt diagnosis, and research efforts to understand this emergent pa...
Outstanding questions plaguing oncologists, centred around tumour evolution and heterogeneity, include the development of treatment resistance, immune evasion, and optimal drug targeting strategies. Such questions are difficult to study in limited ca...
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a leading cause of unexpected mortality worldwide and represents a major challenge in pathology, especially when conventional autopsy fails to identify a definitive cause of death. In these cases, molecular autopsy (MA)...
Postmortem studies are crucial for providing insight into emergent diseases. However, a complete autopsy is frequently not feasible in highly transmissible diseases due to biohazard challenges. Minimally invasive autopsy (MIA) is a needle-based appro...
Purpose: To study the respective contributions and correlations of autopsy and PMCT in fatal ballistic injuries. Methods: A single-center retrospective descriptive study was carried out over a 10-years period (2008–2017) that included cases of...
Virtual autopsies (VAs) are non-invasive, bypassing many of the challenges posed by traditional autopsies (TAs). This is a literature review about the sensitivity of the main VA techniques: post mortem (PM) computed tomography (PMCT) and PM magnetic...
Molecular autopsy is the process of investigating sudden death through genetic analysis. It is particularly useful in cases where traditional autopsy is negative or only shows non-diagnostic features, i.e., in sudden unexplained deaths (SUDs), which...
We systematically reviewed published data on autopsies of patients who died from COVID-19 to identify pathological changes that are consistently reported in autopsies and those that were reported anecdotally, and to compare consistent findings with a...
The identification of human remains relies on the comparison of post-mortem data, collected during the autopsy, with the ante-mortem data gathered from the missing persons’ reports. DNA, fingerprints, and dental data are considered primary identifier...
Background/Objectives: Molecular autopsy increasingly identifies rare variants in heritable aortopathy and Loeys–Dietz spectrum genes among sudden-death decedents, yet classification and causal attribution remain challenging when a syndromic di...
A conclusive and early diagnosis of cardiomyopathy is essential for implementing preventive therapeutic measures and, therefore, reducing the risk of malignant arrhythmias and even sudden cardiac death. Occasionally, this lethal event can be the firs...
Objectives: Traumatic injuries are one of the severe health problems of our time. In the 21st Century, approximately 4.5 million people worldwide die each year due to trauma. Computed tomography (CT) is widely used to diagnose injuries and offers inf...
Purpose: Autopsy remains an important diagnostic and research modality in pediatric oncology. This study examined demographic and clinical factors associated with parental acceptance or decline of autopsy in childhood cancer. Patients and Methods: Th...
14 July 2025
Background and aim: The death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of delivery, regardless of the cause of death, or even up to one year after the end of the pregnancy, due to causes related to or aggravated by pregnancy remains a critical pub...
Sudden unexpected deaths often remain unresolved despite forensic examination, posing challenges for pathologists. Molecular autopsy, through genetic testing, can reveal hidden causes undetectable by standard methods. This review assesses the role of...
Background: A psychological autopsy is a post-mortem investigative tool used to carry out a retrospective reconstruction of a missing subject’s life. The method includes gathering information from all the potentially involved parties, which may...
Molecular autopsy is a term employed to describe the investigation of the cause of death through the analysis of genetic information using biological samples collected post-mortem. Its utility becomes evident in situations where conventional medico-l...
A correctly implemented and widely accepted vaccination campaign was the only truly effective weapon to reduce mortality and hospitalizations related to COVID-19. However, it was not 100% effective and has not eliminated COVID-19. Even though more th...
Few studies have compared the sensitivities of autopsy and post mortem computed tomography (PMCT) in detecting rib fractures caused by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). We aimed to compare the characteristics between both modalities for accurately...
Background/Objectives: Hanging is the most common method of suicide in most countries worldwide. It is characterized by high lethality, technical simplicity, and typical autopsy findings. Autopsy plays a crucial role in determining the cause and mech...
Background: Autopsy pathology remains the reference standard for determining the cause of death, reconstructing disease and injury mechanisms, ensuring diagnostic quality, and supporting medical education and forensic investigations. However, declini...
Background: Perinatal deaths remain a major public health concern and present unique medico-legal challenges. Forensic autopsy plays a crucial role in determining the cause of death, distinguishing live birth from stillbirth, assessing fetal viabilit...
Autopsy is a complex and unrepeatable procedure. It is essential to have the possibility of reviewing the autoptic findings, especially when it is done for medico-legal purposes. Traditional photography is not always adequate to record forensic pract...
Background/Objectives: Mucopolysaccharidosis type III (MPS III, Sanfilippo syndrome) is an autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disorder caused by deficiencies in enzymes required for heparan sulfate degradation. While primarily recognized for its d...
Acute appendicitis is a common cause of acute abdominal pain but is rare in infants because of anatomical and physiological characteristics that reduce the risk of the luminal obstruction of the appendix. However, when it occurs in infants, it is oft...
We report an autopsy case of a 69-year-old female with cervical cancer. She was given bevacizumab-containing chemotherapy for 4 months. After two years of chemotherapy, she developed congestive heart failure (CHF) with left ventricular dysfunction. C...
Falls in a hospital setting are a global public health problem. Despite the production of sensors and various preventive tools to reduce the risk, falls remain a dangerous event with a significant impact on the morbidity and mortality of patients. De...
17 September 2022
Autopsy examination, the gold standard for defining causes of death, is often difficult to apply in certain health care settings, especially in developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated difficulties in terms of implementing autop...
Background: This study compared demographic characteristics and Stanford and DeBakey classification distributions between aortic dissection cases diagnosed in a tertiary hospital and those diagnosed at forensic autopsy. Methods: This retrospective co...
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is defined as unexpected death due to a cardiac cause that occurs rapidly. Despite the identification of prevention strategies, SCD remains a serious public health problem worldwide, accounting for 15–20% of all death...
Background: The literature shows that anterior communicating artery (AcoA) aneurysms are the most common intracranial aneurysms. To date, there has only been one postmortem study focused on the correlations between autopsy findings and imaging result...
Cardiovascular diseases increase among pregnant women and complicate 1–4% of pregnancies worldwide. The incidence of maternal deaths due to cardiovascular causes has increased dramatically, rising from 3% three decades ago to 15% in recent year...
Although COVID-19 may cause various and multiorgan diseases, few research studies have examined the postmortem pathological findings of SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals who died. Active autopsy results may be crucial for understanding how COVID-19 inf...
Background: Sudden death (SD) in the young usually has an underlying genetic cause. In many cases, autopsy reveals unspecific and inconclusive results, like idiopathic left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), nonsignificant coronary atherosclerosis (CA),...
5 March 2019
Objectives: Several studies have shown mortality and suicide risk in substance use disorders, and autopsy findings with respect to the used substances. However, there seems to be a gap in the knowledge about substances misused in life and at death at...
Background: The purpose of this study was to establish a standardized structured workflow to compare findings from high-resolution, optimized reconstructions from post-mortem computed tomography (pmCT) with autopsy results in the detection of fractur...
Background and Clinical Significance: Abusive head trauma (AHT), formerly known as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in infants and young children. While the forensic aspects of acute AHT are well described, auto...
Background: Mechanisms and causes of death in older patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection are still poorly understood. Methods: We conducted in a retrospective monocentric study, a clinical chart review and post-mortem examination of patients aged 75 ye...
In light of falling global autopsy rates, one of the causes of which is the resulting body disfigurement, it has become crucial to search for new, minimally invasive post-mortem diagnostic tools. One of these methods is videoautopsy, a minimally inva...
Background/Objectives: Snakebite envenoming remains a critical yet frequently under-recognized cause of mortality in many parts of the world, particularly in tropical and rural areas where access to timely medical care and accurate post-mortem invest...
Background: Vulnerable road users (VRUs), including children and older adults, face a high risk of fatal road traffic accidents (RTAs) due to limited protection and greater injury susceptibility. Romania reports some of the highest child and elderly...
Road accidents are one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with significant repercussions on public health and the global economy. Fatal accidents can cause injuries in various anatomical areas with different dynamics. The thorax is one of the...
Coinfection with invasive aspergillosis and mucormycosis in immunocompromised patients has been reported but is rarely confirmed by tissue histology or autopsy. Serum fungal biomarkers and culture are the primary diagnostic tools but are suboptimal f...
Invasive fungal infection (IFI) has a high mortality rate in patients who undergo hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and it is often confirmed by postmortem dissection. When IFI is initially confirmed after an autopsy, the tissue culture and fr...
Background/Objectives: Published estimates of histopathological examination (HPE) contribution in medicolegal autopsy use different denominators and outcome definitions. We examined what these estimates measure and their implications for practice. Me...
In the last two decades, three unknown pathogens have caused outbreaks, generating severe global health concerns. In 2003, after nucleic acid genotyping, a new virus was named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV). After nine years...
The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 was identified for the first time in China, in December 2019. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported around the world; indeed, this infection has been declared a pandemic. Consequently, the s...
Sudden, violent and otherwise unexplained deaths are investigated in most western jurisdictions through a Coronial or medico-legal process. A crucial element of such an investigation is the legislative requirement to remove the body for autopsy and o...
Infection with members of the order Rickettsiales (the genera Rickettsia, Anaplasma, Orientia, and Ehrlichia) is known to cause hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH). The literature is scant on flea-borne typhus (FBT) being implicated in this proc...
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