[Privacy After Death]

When a patient requests that information about their diagnosis not be disclosed to family members, physicians are bound by their duty of confidentiality to withhold any health-related data. Medical data relating to living patients are protected under the Spanish legal system; subject to certain limits when other overriding legal interests are at stake. The protection of privacy must be maintained after death as an extension of the individual's memory in life. Upon a patient's death, however, once death has been conclusively established, the physician must issue (in cases of natural death) the medical death certificate, which must state the causes of death with precision; this certificate is provided to the family. This raises a central question: does the duty of confidentiality lapse upon the patient's death? This article examines what follows the patient's death from legal, procedural, and ethical perspectives.