An autopsy study on various dissection techniques of the heart

Background: Autopsy serves as a gold standard for the clinical diagnosis of cardiac arrest, which is important for quality assurance. Materials and methods: 44 medico legal cases of suspicious/ sudden deaths were examined by using various dissection techniques of the heart to identify the cause of death in a 2 year period. The main objective was to know the cause of death by correlating with the past history by the previous reports of the patients, the clinical diagnosis, photographic records, gross study of the heart and Histopathological examination and confirmation. The various methods used are inflow-outflow method; short axis method; window method; Valve plane method; Four chamber cut methods, etc. Different methods are used for different conditions of the heart, e.g., cardiomyopathy, valvular diseases, ischemic heart diseases etc. Results: In the present study males outnumbered the females constituting 26 and 18 respectively. At autopsy majority of the cardiac deaths were confirmed as ischemic heart disease by the short axis dissection method. One case of myocarditis identified with Inflow-Outflow method, one case of restrictive cardiomyopathy dissected with four chambered cut method. 1 case of replaced prosthetic valve dissected with valve-plane method. In three cases cause of death is not identified. Conclusion: Cardiac autopsy is backbone in diseases like Ischemic heart disease and cardiomyopathy etc. Its role in medico-legal case importance cannot be excluded.