Autopsy study of pediatric deaths

Abstract

Autopsy is an important clinical tool providing useful information to the physician. Few published reports are available on pediatric autopsies. This study aims to help in a better understanding of causes of deaths in neonates, infants and children.

Postmortem Examinations on Deceased Neonates: A Rarely Utilized Procedure in an African Referral Center

“…The high neonatal mortality rate of 22.9% recorded in this study, which occurred primarily in neonates who were 7 days old and younger, corresponds with previous reports in this African subregion [12,13]. Very few of the cases (0.8%) benefited from postmortem examination, which led to a massive loss of useful information regarding the possible causes of deaths that could have aided in the future management of babies with similar pathologies, as has been reported in earlier studies [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Obtaining written permission and consent was challenging because of religious beliefs and cultural influence, except for a few enlightened parents/caregivers who requested an autopsy to know the cause of death of their neonates [10].…”

“…Even with the advent of modern sophisticated diagnostic facilities, postmortem examination remains the gold standard for correctly diagnosing many diseases and unraveling unexplained causes of death in neonates [4][5][6]. The beneficial effects of postmortem study include advising parents regarding the cause of death of their neonate, which may help them adjust to the stress of bereavement [3,7].…”

Mortality trend and pattern in tertiary care hospital of Solapur in Maharashtra

“…Infant deaths were less in various studies. (8–10) Pediatric deaths in the present study were 44.6-51.15% in the 5-year period, which were more than that reported by other authors(69–12) but similar in the study of Luiz Cesar Peres. (7) Deaths in patients of the age 15-60 years were nearly similar in the CRS report(9) but more (57%) in the report by Bhatia et al .…”

What New Information Pediatric Autopsies Can Provide

“…Our estimates, however, of the percentage of autopsies with premortem and postmortem discrepancies match the figures reported by others, suggesting that our review of the clinical and pathological medical records captured information in a manner consistent with previous similar studies. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]12,13 Second, the conduct of this study required the investigative team to make many subjective judgments, which could have biased the processes of data collection and data scoring. The classification of what constitutes an unexpected finding or clarification is a subjective determination that may differ among clinicians and pathologists.…”

“…Current literature suggests that pediatric autopsies are performed in approximately 27% to 67% of childhood deaths, [4][5][6][7][8] with new diagnoses or additional medical information discovered in 21% to 76% of autopsy cases [9][10][11] and with significant differences in premortem and postmortem diagnoses in 6% to 39% of patients. [6][7][8]10,12,13 With this emphasis on di-agnostic accuracy, studies have traditionally described the utility of pediatric autopsy in terms of the degree of concordance between clinical diagnoses and pathological findings at the time of autopsy. 4,5,8 In a number of these studies, the value of autopsy is classified using a standard set of criteria ( Table 1) that are focused on hospital quality-control processes.…”