Performance of post-mortem CT compared to autopsy in children.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_E15E52CFF1B0
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Performance of post-mortem CT compared to autopsy in children.
Journal
International journal of legal medicine
Author(s)
Krentz B.V., Alamo L., Grimm J., Dédouit F., Bruguier C., Chevallier C., Egger C., Da Silva L.F., Grabherr S.
ISSN
1437-1596 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0937-9827
Publication state
Published
Issued date
07/2016
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
130
Number
4
Pages
1089-1099
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Comparative Study ; Journal Article
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
Radiological techniques such as non-enhanced post-mortem computed tomography (PMCT) play an increasingly important role in death investigations, especially in cases of non-medicolegal context of death, where the consent of the next of kin is required to perform autopsy. Such consent is often difficult to obtain for deceased children, and radiological methods may be an acceptable alternative. The aim of our study was to evaluate the performance of PMCT explorations compared to medicolegal conventional autopsies in children and its potential usefulness in non-medicolegal situations.
We retrospectively reviewed a group of 26 children aged 0-12 years who died of different causes, which were investigated by both conventional autopsy and PMCT. We compared the findings extracted from radiological and autopsy reports. All findings were grouped according to their importance with respect to cause of death and to the anatomical structure they covered: organs, vascular system, soft tissue, and skeletal system.
A significantly larger number of findings were detected by autopsy compared to PMCT. Autopsy proved to be superior to PMCT, notably at detecting organ, soft tissue, and vascular findings, while PMCT was superior at detecting bone findings. However, no statistically significant differences were found between the methods concerning the essential findings used to define the cause of death.
In children, PMCT was less sensitive than conventional autopsy for detecting general findings. However, most essential findings were detected by both methods. PMCT was superior to autopsy for the detection of bone lesions in children.
Up to today, very rare literature exists concerning PMCT in children, especially in a forensic setting. This article investigates the advantages and limitations of PMCT compared to autopsy in a unique study group and discusses possibilities for future developments.

Keywords
Autopsy/methods, Cause of Death, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Forensic Pathology/methods, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Male, Multidetector Computed Tomography, Retrospective Studies, Forensic imaging, Forensic radiology, Pediatric imaging, Post-mortem CT
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
27/05/2016 15:03
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:05
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