Health hazards at autopsy - A review article

The postmortem room is a source of potential hazards to the health of forensic experts, pathologists and mortuary technicians. Infectious pathogens in cadavers that present particular risk include mycobacterium tuberculosis, HBV, HCV, HIV and prions that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and gerstmann-strausster-sheinker syndrome (GSS). This review focuses specifically on these hazards associated with the autopsy of infected patients.