Autopsy and the internal medicine department

The accuracy of major clinical diagnoses and causes of death was estimated from the analysis of clinical diagnoses and autopsy findings of patients deceased at the internal medicine department of a large university hospital in two different periods (1965-1967 and 1985-1987). The autopsy cases from the second period were subdivided in two groups i.e. less and more than seven days of hospital stay prior death. From 100 randomly selected autopsy cases in each period there was no statistically significant variability in clinico-pathological concordance. In three groups studied (1965-1967, 1985-1987 < seven days and 1985-1987 < seven days hospital stay) the major clinical diagnosis was confirmed in 85, 94 and 86% respectively. A decrease of nearly 27% in the number of autopsies performed is shown between analysed periods. Clinico-pathological conferences are regularly held weekly, this being one of the reasons for a stable and extremely high clinico-pathological concordance.