ArticleVirchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology2015
Changes in autopsy rates among cancer patients and their impact on cancer statistics from a public health point of view: a longitudinal study from 1980 to 2010 with data from Cancer Registry Zurich.
Article in Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effect of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy on survival and recurrence rates in advanced gastric cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.International journal of surgery (London, England) · 2023Pooled it
- Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) plus systemic chemotherapy versus systemic chemotherapy alone in locally advanced gastric cancer after D2 radical resection: a randomized-controlled study.Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology · 2023Trial
- Trends in the Hidden Burden of Cancer in an Autopsy-Based Study Over 66 Years in Japan.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Trends in Pathological Autopsy in Japan From 1958 to 2023.Pathology international · 2025Article
- The Prognostic Role of Frailty and Its Recognition With Simple FRAIL and Fried Frailty Questionnaires in Advanced Cancer Patients.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2025Article
- Autopsy rates and diagnostic errors in a Swiss community hospital: a ten-year retrospective analysis.Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2025Article
- Cause of death and the autopsy rate in an elderly population.Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2023Article
- Surgical Options for Peritoneal Surface Metastases from Digestive Malignancies-A Comprehensive Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Review
- Observational
- Implementation of modern tools in autopsy practice-the way towards contemporary postmortal diagnostics.Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2019Article
- Distinguishing Tumor From Bland Portal Vein Thrombus in Liver Transplant Candidates With Hepatocellular Carcinoma: the A-VENA Criteria.Liver transplantation : official publication of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society · 2019Article
- Restoration of an academic historical gross pathology collection-refreshed impact on current medical teaching?Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2018Article
- Clinical significance of heat shock proteins in gastric cancer following hyperthermia stress: Indications for hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemoperfusion therapy.Oncology letters · 2018Article
- [Clinical autopsies in Switzerland : A status report].Der Pathologe · 2017Review
- Resveratrol induces mitochondria-mediated, caspase-independent apoptosis in murine prostate cancer cells.Oncotarget · 2017Article
- Autopsy rates in the Netherlands: 35 years of decline.PloS one · 2017Article
- Baseline mortality-adjusted survival in colon cancer patients.Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
During the last decades, autopsy rates have dramatically decreased in many countries. The Cancer Registry Zurich, which exists since 1980, provides the opportunity to address to what extent the number of autopsies in cancer patients has changed over a longer period of time and how often autopsies provide a diagnosis of clinically undetected cancer. Data from the Cancer Registry Zurich consisting of 102,434 cancer cases among 89,933 deceased patients between 1980 and 2010 were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics. The autopsy rate declined from 60 % in 1980 to 7 % in 2010. The total number of autopsies performed decreased from 1179 in 1986 to 220 in 2010. Furthermore, there was also a decline in the rate of newly detected tumours based on autopsy information. In 1980, the rate of newly detected tumours through autopsy was 42 % compared with 2010, when the rate had declined to 17 %. A consequence of the reduced autopsy rate is the reduction of incidental findings at autopsy in cancer registration. However, this reduction has not negatively affected the total incidence of cancer. It seems that the state-of-the-art diagnostic tools used for tumour detection are sufficiently reliable, allowing the scientific community to trust the quality of data provided by cancer registries in spite of decreasing autopsy rates.
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Registered trials
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