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Previous Volume 358:873-875 February 28, 2008 Number 9 Next

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We've all heard about cases in which a patient presumed to have died from acute myocardial infarction was discovered at autopsy to have had an aortic dissection, or a patient who presented with decompensated liver failure from presumed alcoholic cirrhosis but proved at autopsy to have widely metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma. Indeed, an extensive literature documents the frequency with which autopsy reveals clinically significant diagnoses that were missed before death.¹ Autopsies also generate more accurate vital statistics, provide pathological descriptions of new diseases, and offer powerful tools for education and quality assurance (see Benefits of Nonforensic Autopsies). Yet despite these benefits, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Dr. Shojania is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa and a clinical epidemiologist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute, Ottawa. Dr. Burton is a clinical scholar in pathology and laboratory medicine in the Baylor Health Care System and the director of autopsy pathology at the Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas.

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