Article Text
Abstract
Since 2000 the hospital post mortem rate has been in free fall and is now less than 5% of deaths in many hospitals in the UK. A major factor in this decline has been the turmoil following events in Bristol and in Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool where organs were retained apparently without the knowledge or consent of the bereaved. There is now a real danger of hospital post mortem examinations (PMEs) disappearing altogether, with the associated loss of the necessary skills amongst consultant pathologists. Does this matter?
To answer the question we need to focus on what has been achieved through examination of post mortem human brains in the past, specifically for neurological disorders. Firstly, collections of diseased and normal cases in Brain Banks have facilitated the discovery of new diseases such as Dementia with Lewy Bodies and variant CJD. Secondly, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying long recognized diseases
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Other content recommended for you
- Mind the gap: are NHS trusts falling short of recommended standards for consent to autopsy
- Clinicopathological case: rapid cognitive decline in an older man
- Neuropathological investigation of dementia: a guide for neurologists
- Lewy body cortical involvement may not always predict dementia in Parkinson ’s disease
- Perinatal pathology in the context of a clinical trial: attitudes of bereaved parents
- Dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson ’s disease with dementia: where two worlds collide
- Post mortem examinations after cardiac surgery
- How can we ensure that the coroner ’s autopsy is not an invasion of human rights
- An evaluation of the impact of MAPT, SNCA and APOE on the burden of Alzheimer 's and Lewy body pathology
- Anosmia in dementia is associated with Lewy bodies rather than Alzheimer 's pathology