A 10 Year Autopsy Study of Hospital Deaths Brought to the Mortuary of a Tertiary Care Hospital in North East India

Abstract

Without autopsies, hospitals bury their mistakes. However, not every hospital death is autopsied. As a result,
experts say, diagnostic errors are missed, opportunities to improve medical treatment are lost and health-care
statistics are skewed. In this 10 year retrospective study, hospital death cases which were brought for autopsy
were analyzed with respect to year wise incidence, sex and age wise incidence, reasons for hospitalization
and cause of death to ascertain whether the deaths were due to medical negligence or due to natural course
of events of the disease. The findings reveal that 40% of the cases were due to negligence. This substantial
loss could have been prevented if timely intervention was done. The study aims to highlight this important
aspect of medical practice.