Nationwide autopsy registration over 30 years

In this paper, a unique, nationwide autopsy registration system used in Japan is introduced, which has been used by the Japanese Pathological Society since 1958. The autopsy data collected are published annually in an Annual of Pathological Autopsy Cases in Japan, known in Japanese as the Bouken Shuho. In the most recent volume, about 40,000 cases (representing about 5% of all deaths in Japan) were presented. These annual volumes comprise two parts: a description of findings and a statistical section. The latter is composed mainly of tables, including tabulations of disease, age and sex; disease and geographical location; primary site and histological type of cancer; and primary site/primary site for double primary malignant neoplasms. Since 1974, tabulation has been computerized, and this same file is also used to retrieve descriptive data in the book. Since 1984, the findings section of the Bouken Shuho has been published using a desk-top system. A project to incorporate the original documents stored in this system, in order to establish a more sophisticated, fully computerized document retrieval system, is under way.