3. Utilization of routine histopathology for autopsy diagnosis and medical education |
Wooyoung Jang, Seong Hwan Park
Department of Legal Medicine, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea |
Histopathology is an essential tool for medical examiner’s practice. In Korea, sixty among 64 forensic pathologists certified by Korean Society for Legal Medicine have national pathology board. However, histopathology contributes only a small portion in the research for forensic medicine and science in South Korea, despite its vigorous utilization in routine autopsy diagnoses. Moreover, forensic histopathology is not actively utilized in education for medical students either compared to hospital pathology and gross autopsy findings. Because there is virtually no administrative autopsy in Korea and even autopsies for obvious non-criminal deaths are sorely performed under prosecutor’s warrants, medicolegal autopsy cases in South Korea can be an excellent source for medical teaching material. We reviewed medicolegal autopsies performed in our department in last 10 years and selected cases of which diagnoses were greatly aided by histopathologic findings. There were many educationally valuable cases such as various stages of myocardial infarction, incidental detection of double primary tumors, death due to pituitary tumor, untreated malignancies in the final stage, fungal infection, electric shock, and chronic atrophy of skeletal muscle due to denervation. The medical student participating in this program had a good chance to promote his clinical knowledge via reviewing autopsy findings and histopathology slides. The medical student will present what he reviewed, learned, and felt through this immersion learning in forensic histopathology. We are considering using this slide set for sub-internship program in legal medicine regulated by Korea University College of Medicine. |
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