Autopsies

Wrongful death cases are sometimes an enigma to both the physician and attorney. How do you proceed when the cause of death is unknown? In these cases, often an autopsy must be performed in order to accurately determine the precise cause or causes of death and, consequently, whether or not a lawsuit or settlement is warranted.

AMFS's expert panel includes many highly qualified forensic pathologists and forensic specialists capable of performing autopsies and determining the cause of death, even if an autopsy has already been performed and no cause of death determined from the autopsy.

Advances in medical technology, including sophisticated imaging techniques, percutaneous biopsy, fine needle aspiration, and a multitude of new laboratory methods, have reinforced diagnostic overconfidence and have led to the perception that autopsies are no longer necessary.   From Cabot's 1912 autopsy study of 3000 patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital to two 1998 studies at separate academic institutions, the literature documents well the approximate 40% disagreement between antemortem and postmortem diagnoses.   Autopsies show that, in many cases, if the diagnosis had been correct, survival could have been prolonged.  Although new diagnostic techniques can provide conclusive clinical information, these techniques can also contribute to false-positive and false-negative diagnoses and do not appreciably decrease the rate of misdiagnoses as discovered by autopsy.

The truth is that when the final outcome is death, the autopsy still remains the best available tool for evaluating diagnostic accuracy and/or cause of death.