Factors predicting cases with unexpected clinical findings at necropsy.

Factors predicting cases with unexpected clinical findings at necropsy.

AIMS/BACKGROUND A major medical role for postmortem examinations is the detection of clinically unexpected disease processes contributing to death. The aim of the present study was to determine whether simple clinical parameters can predict the presence of important unanticipated findings at necropsy. METHODS Prospective audit of adult necropsies carried out in a single year to assess the ext...

Clinical and necropsy findings in patients with calcified myocardial infarcts.

Clinical and necropsy findings are described in 37 patients with grossly visible myocardial infarcts. At the time of the first infarct, the 31 men ranged in age from 25 to 72 years (mean, 47) and the 6 women, from 50 to 70 years (mean, 56). The interval from the first clinically apparent acute myocardial infarct to death varied from 2 to 28 years (mean, 13) and was >or=10 years in 24 of 32 pati...

Clinical and necropsy findings in hemoglobin C disease.

Clinical signs in the Wernicke-Korsakoff complex: a retrospective analysis of 131 cases diagnosed at necropsy.

A recent necropsy study has shown that 80% of patients with the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome were not diagnosed as such during life. Review of the clinical signs of these cases revealed that only 16% had the classical clinical triad and 19% had no documented clinical signs. The incidence of clinical signs in this and other retrospective pathological studies is very different from that of prospec...

Findings at necropsy in the heart of a patient with anticardiolipin syndrome.

A 40 year old man with a history of myocardial infarction and hypertension presented with transient cerebral ischaemic attacks, aortic regurgitation, a raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and thrombocytopenia. The anticardiolipin syndrome was diagnosed and he was treated with prednisolone and warfarin. He died two years later after the development of acute heart failure. At necropsy his hear...