Background: SARS-CoV-2 is classified as a class 3 biological agent; therefore, autopsies on positive subjects must be performed in BSL 3 sectorial rooms. However, many centers lacking such facilities perform molecular nasopharyngeal swabs for SARS-Co...
Background: In the early developmental phase of a postmortem rapid tissue donation (rtd) program for patients with metastatic cancer, we surveyed health care professionals (hcps) and oncology patients at the McGill University Health Centre (muhc) to...
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...
A woman in her seventies living alone was found dead on the floor of her living room. A blue-green swelling was found from her right cheek to her anterior neck and an autopsy was performed. The autopsy revealed subcutaneous abscesses from the right c...
Catastrophic thrombotic syndrome, otherwise known as thrombotic storm (TS) is an extreme prothrombotic clinical syndrome that presents as rapid onset of multiple thromboembolic events affecting a large variety of vasculature. In recent studies, there...
Background: Cancer-related cachexia remains a significant cause of death, particularly for undiagnosed or untreated malignancies. Lymphomas, especially in uncommon locations, may go unrecognized until their advanced stages. Methods: We report the cas...
Background and objectives: Non-surgical deaths in the Emergency Department (ED) occur in the context of severe acute pathology and frequently under conditions of limited diagnostic time and incomplete clinical information. Data integrating ante-morte...
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: Studies in rodents have re-kindled interest in the study of lymphatics in the central nervous system. Animal studies have demonstrated that there is a connection between the subarachnoid space and deep cervical lymph nodes (DCLNs) through...
Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening or fatal clinical emergency characterized by rapid onset, and death may be sudden. The margin of certainty about the diagnosis of anaphylactic death is not well established. The application of immunohistochemical tec...
Escherichia coli, Streptococcus equi subsp. zooepidemicus, Klebsiella oxytoca, and Enterococcus durans are microorganisms capable of causing severe infections, particularly in patients with underlying comorbidities or immune dysfunction. We report a...
Background: Cause of death analysis is fundamental to forensic pathology. We present the case of a 9½-year-old girl with a genetically confirmed diagnosis of Dravet syndrome who died in her sleep with no evidence of motor seizure. She also had...
Nocardia species are aerobic, gram positive filamentous branching bacteria that have the potential to cause localized or disseminated infection. Nocardiosis is a rare disease that usually affects immunocompromised patients and presents as either pulm...
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...
Background and Objective: Intravenous therapy is widely used in clinics to deliver medications and fluids to patients, and overuse may cause intravenous-infusion-associated circulatory overload (IACO) and death. However, forensic data on deaths from...
Postmortem diagnosis of sudden cardiac death (SCD) may escape detection due to the absence of thrombi and slow development of structural and immunohistochemical changes. Therefore, this study explores the possibility of analyzing relevant clinical ch...
Intramedullary spinal cord metastases (ISCMs) are infrequent lesions. Their incidence is estimated to range from 0.9 to 2.1%, found in autopsies of cancer patients. However, as the life expectancy of malignant tumour patients constantly increases, th...
Fatal neck injuries represent a major challenge in forensic pathology because the anatomical complexity and high variability of neck structures make it often extremely difficult to differentiate true pathological findings from artifacts at autopsy. T...
(1) Background: While decreasing bone mineral density (BMD) with age in living people has been well documented, a correlation between age and bone mineral density in deceased people has only been reported in a few studies. A correlation between age a...
Vitreous fluid is commonly collected for toxicological analysis during forensic postmortem investigations. Vitreous fluid is also often analyzed for potassium, sodium, chloride and glucose for estimation of time since death, and for the evaluation of...
Ex vivo Fluorescence Confocal Microscopy (FCM) is a technique providing high-resolution images of native tissues. The method is increasingly used in surgical settings in areas of dermatology and urology. Only a few publications exist about examinatio...
Congenital toxoplasmosis presents with a wide clinical spectrum, ranging from asymptomatic infection to severe disease with multi-organ failure. We report a rare fatal case of disseminated congenital toxoplasmosis in a human neonate. The infant initi...
Experimental studies of neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have mostly investigated microglia, the brain-resident macrophages. This review focused on human microglia obtained at rapid autopsies. Studies employing methods to isolate a...
Background and Clinical Significance: Necrotizing fasciitis (NF) is a fulminant, life-threatening polymicrobial infection of the soft tissues, characterized by the progressive and widespread necrosis of the subcutaneous tissues and fascial planes. Al...
Temporal and spatial epigenetic modifications in the brain occur during ontogenetic development, pathophysiological disorders, and aging. When epigenetic marks, such as histone methylations, in brain autopsies or biopsy samples are studied, it is cri...
Ultrapure water (UPW) distribution loops must deliver stable hydraulics while limiting contamination from polymer piping. This study integrates computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with systematic pipe autopsy to examine contaminant behavior in a pilot...
A strain of human adenovirus type C1 was isolated from multiple anatomical compartments in a pediatric patient with late-onset Pompe disease. Over a period of 23 days from the appearance of fever and respiratory symptoms until death, disease progress...
22 June 2021
Quadruple aberrant hyperphosphorylated tau (p-τ), amyloid-β peptide, alpha-synuclein and TDP-43 brainstem and supratentorial pathology are documented in forensic ≤40y autopsies in Metropolitan Mexico City (MMC), and p-τ is the major aberrant protein....
The RAF1:p.Ser257Leu variant is associated with severe Noonan syndrome (NS), progressive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), and pulmonary hypertension. Trametinib, a MEK-inhibitor approved for treatment of RAS/MAPK-mutated cancers, is an emerging tre...
Background: Influenza B usually causes mild illness in children. Severe and fatal cases can occur when complicated by secondary Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) pneumonia, including community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRS...
Mushroom-related intoxications pose a distinctive challenge for forensic medicine because early manifestations are non-specific, latency may be prolonged, and co-exposures can obscure the mechanism of death. This narrative review summarizes key toxic...
Background: Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is a respiratory pathogen that causes illness ranging from mild upper respiratory tract infections to severe pneumonia, particularly in individuals with comorbidities. Fatal cases of hMPV-induced hemorrhagic p...
Microorganisms are able to form biofilms within respiratory secretions. Methods to disaggregate such biofilms before utilizing standard, rapid, or high throughput diagnostic technologies may aid in pathogen detection during ventilator associated pneu...
The diaphragm is the primary muscle of respiration. Here, we disclose a fascinating patient’s perspective that led, by clinical reasoning alone, to a novel mechanism of spontaneous respiratory arrests termed diaphragm cramp-contracture (DCC). A...
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has emerged as one of the most significant global health crises in recent history. The clinical characteristics of COVID-19 pat...
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid widely used for its potent analgesic effects in chronic pain management and intraoperative anesthesia. However, its high potency, low cost, and accessibility have also made it a significant drug of abuse, contributing t...
Background/Objectives: Differential diagnosis of sudden cardiac death (SCD) remains challenging, particularly in cases lacking evident structural abnormalities. Cardiac markers have been proposed as useful tools for this differentiation in forensic c...
1 January 2014
Pontine and extrapontine myelinolysis, later termed osmotic demyelination syndrome (ODS), were first described in autopsy cases. Initially its patho¬physiology remained an enigma. Experimental and clinical studies finally elucidated that osmotic flui...
Background: Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), also designated hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome, is caused by New World hantaviruses, principally Sin Nombre virus in North America and Andes virus in South America. The syndrome is characterized b...
Background: Giant cell myocarditis (GCM) is a rare condition with an incompletely understood immune pathogenesis, characterized by inflammatory damage to the myocardium and the presence of multinucleated giant cells on histopathological examination....