Since the first medicolegal autopsies in 13th century Italy, they have always been accompanied by a specific rate of cases where autopsy reveals significant disease unknown to the clinicians before death - clinicopathological discrepancies [
1]. Since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) brought about a significant challenge to healthcare, autopsies are an excellent quality marker and a valuable educational tool [
2,
3,
4]. With that in mind, we set out this research to find out how much (if it did) COVID-19 influenced clinicopathological discrepancies and, thus, healthcare quality. Aside from that, some new approaches to the earliest paradigm of autopsy have been presented, considering the post-COVID era and some modern developments.
Although autopsy remains an essential tool for quality assurance at the same time, it reveals or confirms the cause of death and provides information that may differ significantly from the premortem clinical impression. At times, it happens in 1 of 3 autopsies [
2]. Zehr and colleagues found a somewhat smaller proportion. They claim that autopsy found over 20% of discrepancies compared to premortem clinical impression [
5,
6]. Discrepancies had decreased significantly over time, but their rate was still high in 2010 [
2], and in "COVID era" circumstances, it nonetheless accounts for approximately one-third of all postmortems.
Discrepancies
Despite its discrepancies compared to clinical records, Autopsy remains the gold standard as the ultimate diagnostic procedure [
7,
8]. It is a standard of post-mortem healthcare and an important tool to advance medical knowledge [
8].
The diagnostic discrepancy does not equal diagnostic error (see
Table 1 for the classification). Diagnostic error is a condition that could harm the patient, with no acceptable grounds and no scientific data for defense. Discrepancy refers to a reasonable difference or a divergence of opinion about a finding or diagnosis [
9].
Premortem clinical diagnoses and postmortem findings do not match throughout history, constantly underscoring the need for enhanced surveillance, monitoring, and treatment. In 2003, a Command Paper by "Luce's group" was presented to Parliament in the UK. That report established the lack of evidence about the utility and justification for coroners' autopsies in 18%. That was the proportion of coroners' autopsies where
findings did not support the clinical course. Nevertheless, the results of most analyses nowadays indicate that discrepancies remain at a 10% rate, even in the face of advances in diagnostic techniques; these findings are sustained when data are adjusted for time and geography. Clinical history was given in the autopsy report in 76% of cases. Tissue samples for histopathology were retained in only 13% of the coronial autopsy cases; this increased to 19-55% in the subsequent reports [
10,
11]. For instance, from the initial 50% of autopsies findings that were unsuspected before death and 18% did not support the clinical course [
10,
12], in 2017, significant findings that had not been clinically detected were found in19.5% [
13]. Conversely, the study of Sonderegger-lseli et al. from 2000 noticed a substantial decline in the frequency of major discrepancies increase in the rate of minor diagnostic errors [
14].
The trend line for the plot in
Figure 1 should help visualize a tendency of the constant presence of clinicopathological discrepancies.
Standards and Apophenic vs. Evidence-based Forensic Medicine
Perhaps the perennial persistence of discrepancies rests in the practice of forensic pathologists to rely on experience and individual customary practice in formulating their opinion. Such a feature might be a potential source of error in formulating conclusions. Case reports, found so dear in forensic medicine, are detailed descriptions the of the circumstances, physical presentations, medical features, treatments, and unique features of an individual case that advance medical and forensic sciences. Moreover, it has educational value [
23]. On the other hand, forensic pathology is a major discipline of forensic medicine. It provides evidence to determine the effects of injury, toxic substances, and disease, focusing on criminal law. Since reports of that practice vary considerably in quality between individuals and between centers, the fact that no internationally accepted recommendations exist certainly does not provide for it [
24].
Relying on experience and customary practice will make room for the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things and recognize patterns that do not meaningfully exist – apophenia [
25,
26]. Although the word has a negative connotation, I firmly believe that the reliability of expert opinions originates in evidence-based practice. The methodology by which forensic pathologists formulate their opinions and recommendations on reporting and communicating is not always transparent and reflects the differences in the scope and role of forensic medical services and local settings.
We must also consider the methodology of work and report creation by pathologists in a hospital environment. Pathologists take tissue/histological samples during autopsies and formulate the main disease and the immediate cause of death in their reports, based on which they submit data to the central statistical institute, which is all regulated by the rulebook on filling out the death certificate, which in turn is established as part of the law on health care (a specific example in Croatia [
27]). Pathologists "arrange" their diagnoses pathophysiologically, and the order is often not within the "expectations" of clinicians. The main disease is not necessarily COD; the pathologist places it first. Clinicians often disagree due to a simple misunderstanding of the pathohistological methodology. Sometimes, they simply name it differently. For example, a pathologist will not name respiratory insufficiency as such. Why is that? They cannot say that the patient does not breathe well - they examine a dead body, not a living patient. The pathologist could name it pulmonary edema if he finds reddish homogeneous content in the alveoli and blood vessels filled with blood in the septal area of the alveolar tissue. The clinician could see that very strange and say that the patient did not have symptoms of pulmonary edema. In that case, the pathologist understands that the clinician is not wrong, but the clinician hears a different statement, often an incriminatory one. Therefore, sometimes it is necessary to understand and incorporate the human side (ego), when we observe a lack of cooperation between the pathologist and the clinician if the pathologist "points out a mistake". Fortunately, there are fewer such cases, given that those pathologists were brought up in the manner that "our mistakes are kept in paraffin blocks and can be proven". During professional training of pathologists, it is expected to make mistakes. It is usual for a colleague to show his mistakes and emphasize them to teach colleagues around him not to repeat the same mistakes. As far as statistics are concerned, it is also essential to emphasize the increasingly clear trend of decreasing the number of autopsies due to better diagnostics before death and at the expense of the fact that the end is often determined as part of a long-standing malignant disease. In hospitals, it is illogical that material, time, and human resources are spent, relatively speaking, on the dead when they can be used for the living. As a result, autopsies are often not performed when the cause of death is clear, when the clinician, pathologist, family, and director of the institution agree that the autopsy is not necessary. It is important to emphasize that this does not result in a loss of quality but a loss of accuracy and completeness of the statistics. That is why statistical data on the cause of death are often based on clinical knowledge, not on the autopsy report, and it is not possible to speak about the discrepancy between the clinical opinion and the autopsy report. The statistics are also affected by the number of patients who do not die in hospitals but who die at home. In some European countries, there is no coroner`s office linked to the police department, and often, even forensic pathology departments are not related to the police departments. The lack of medical staff is seen in these countries also in this field, and the coroner that fills out the death certificate needs not to be a doctor but a specially trained nurse or even not even a nurse. On the one side, the teaching facilities are constantly confronted with the needs of" students; on the other side, there are pathology or forensic medicine departments with available human material from postmortems. In between are many legal challenges related to the substantial commodity value of bodily material [
28,
29,
30]. Teaching, laboratory quality control, and research rely on human tissue [
3]. So, the data from 2006 shocks. In 2006, 65% of autopsy reports in the UK did not indicate whether histology samples were obtained - even though these were formally retained in no more than 13% of the cases of coronial autopsy [
10,
31,
32,
33]. With time, this number is 19-55% due to implementing a "new" consent process [
34]. Partly, persistency is a consequence of the COVID-19 chrissis, but with the origin as long ago as in the margins of organ retention controversy (from Bristol's first organ scandal [
35,
36] in 1998, the Alder Hey organs scandal" in the UK, or a case of New Zealand's hospital [
37,
38,
39]. Reacting to the Alder Hey organs scandal, another Act of the Parliament of Great Britain was brought about in 2004 – known for its colloquial name "The Human Tissue Act 2004" [
40,
41,
42]. In that same vein, the British Anatomy Act of 1977 was modified for the territory of Australia into The Human Tissue and Anatomy Legislation Amendment Act in 2003 [
43,
44]. Rigorously, this regulation permits the retention of human tissue post-mortem. That refers to cases of non-coronial autopsies [
45], and only if an adult deceased had given consent to such use [
46], unambiguously and without revocation, though [
47,
48]. Post mortem management of organs (or body parts) needed regulation throughout the past, so to sustain the integrity of this review, it will be started with "the Murder Act 1751," an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that defines that only the corpses of executed murderers could be used for dissection [
49,
50]. It remained so for over eighty years, when another Act of Parliament was passed, permitting medical students and teachers in general, but particularly in anatomy, to dissect donated bodies.
Removal, retention, and disposal of human tissue that was unapproved during the period 1988 to 199 caused a profound crisis in organ handling postmortem [
51,
52]. That crisis could have had implications for the care of any patient [
53], but publicity was especially stroked by the fact that many of these cases were children's organs [
54]. Over 2,000 containers with children's body parts were revealed at the hospital in Liverpool [
41,
55]. As a result of organ shortage in medical education [
56,
57], there have been many discussions in past years worldwide. Explaining tissue from the living patients is covered by practical laws from a healthcare d. domain, and always requires consent. In the context of post mortem healthcare, it is different; it is almost grotesque to insist on informed consent to perform an autopsy [
58,
59]. Generally, next of kin are not well informed when consenting. Consent is repeatedly required to remove tissue from the body of a deceased person and store or use it for research, including when the removal for this purpose has taken place during a coroner's postmortem examination. Nowadays, the worldwide trend in handling human organs is consent. Not only does it help to encourage trust and respect between researchers and grieving families, but it is legally required to store and use 'relevant material from the living or deceased for a 'scheduled purpose' such as research. It is indeed a global standard. In Zambian children, the rate of consenting autopsy was merely 25% [
60]; on the other hand, a Jamaican study reports a consent rate of 65% [
61].
In spite the consent for an autopsy, next of kin's permission for the use of organs/tissue for scientific research and education seem to exhibit persistent falling rate. removal of The guidelines from the European Parliament and Council advised that postmortem consent forms should include a section explicitly addressing the issue of organ retention [
62,
63]. Hospital and mortuary staff should be educated on brain and spinal cord donations programs, with a prerogative of availability of such. These are cases where consent is usually specific to the project itself, however in more vague cases-more generic consent to include storage and future use. If seeking generic consent, researchers should prudently weight how much information to provide to potential participants of a certain study so that they could easily understand the significance of their contribution' scope and its future use. Briefly, researchers should foresee how samples might be used in the future. Fortunately, rigorous standards on required consent do not apply for education or training.
So, as there are neither independent guidelines nor a federal law on postmortem examination practices, the authority to conduct an autopsy comes from the state law. Moreover, it rests totally in the authority of a coroner or medical examiner to decide whether a postmortem will be requested. However, only a few states' Statutes address the issue of retention of remains verbatim.
However, by no means can the answer to the organ retention question be considered vague or incomplete. This issue is regulated under the common law, which originates from the seventeenth-century England and is summarized in the Restatements of the Law series for the Court use. However, due to the absence of any federal law and national guidelines on postmortem examination practices), cases of unconsented" collection/retention of organs" come to the public occasionally. So, the case law, is ambiguous and outdated [
64].