Autopsies are dropping off.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the rate of autopsies fell from 19.3 percent in 1972 to 8.5 percent in 2007.
Autopsies are performed when there’s suspicion of foul play, but medical examinations of the dead are valuable in other circumstances, too. They “generate more accurate vital statistics, provide pathological descriptions of new diseases, and offer powerful tools for education and quality assurance,” according to a 2008 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, the vast majority of deaths, 91 percent, are disease-related but those cases are now much less likely to be examined with an autopsy. By 2007, only 4.3 percent of deaths attributed to diseases were evaluated with autopsies.
According to Kaiser Health News, until 1970, hospitals were required to autopsy at least 20 percent of their patients to remain accredited. When that requirement was dropped, autopsy rates began to fall. The rate hit a low of 8.1 percent in 2003, before creeping back up, slightly, in the following years.
The decline in autopsies also stems from the cost and improved technology, such as sophisticated imaging. That has fostered ” a general perception that it’s less needed because we have more diagnostic techniques,” said Donna Hoyert, author of the CDC report on autopsies.
Hospitals, in theory, receive money from the federal government to perform autopsies through Medicare payments, but that money apparently doesn’t appear to offer pathology departments much of an an incentive. Some hospitals have even begun charging $3,500 to $6,000 for autopsies, undoubtedly deterring some families from requesting the examinations.
“In essence what they’re saying is, ‘We don’t want to do this,’” said Gregory J. Davis, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Kentucky.
LILLY FOWLER
