Contents: Introduction to clinical autopsy: Introduction

In this video-lesson, we will briefly explain some of the main theoretical aspects of this unit. The following video provides most of the basic information necessary to pass the test. You may also download a PDF archive with expanded data about this unit.

1. Introduction

Autopsy means see with your own eyes and it is defined in technical dictionaries as: "Examination of a body, including organs and internal structures after dissection to pinpoint the cause of death or the nature of pathological changes". The clinical autopsy has about 2,000 years of history. However, the golden period of the clinical autopsy is the last 200 years, which has contributed substantially to the advancement of medicine in many and fundamental fields giving rise to Modern medicine. Thus, it was during the 19^th and 20^th centuries when pathologists started to describe diseases allowing a solid advance in the clinicopathological knowledge in every field. In this light, pathology departments are usually placed at the lowest floors in hospitals to remind us that Pathology is the discipline that sustains Modern medicine.

Currently, although neither the autopsy nor pathologist have not gained recognition, we perform autopsies with excellent results in the fields of teaching, research, and quality control, detecting most severe medical errors.

The general population may be enchanted by television series where autopsies are shown. However, such autopsies usually portray violent or unnatural causes constituting forensic autopsies carried out by forensic scientists within a different legal framework. The autopsies to which we refer in this course are clinical, pediatric, or adult autopsies.