ArticleSAGE open medicine2021
Autopsies and quality of cause of death diagnoses.
Article in SAGE open medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Colorectal cancer mortality in persons with severe mental illness: a scoping review with meta-analyses of observational studies.Acta oncologica (Stockholm, Sweden) · 2025Pooled it
- Incidence and outcomes of acute mesenteric ischaemia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ open · 2022Pooled it
- Regional and educational disparities in inaccurately coded deaths in Sweden, 1997-2023: a systematic analysis.Population health metrics · 2026Article
- LCMS-Net: Deep Learning for Raw High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data Applied to Forensic Cause-of-Death Screening.Analytical chemistry · 2026Article
- Trends in Pathological Autopsy in Japan From 1958 to 2023.Pathology international · 2025Article
- Autopsy rates and diagnostic errors in a Swiss community hospital: a ten-year retrospective analysis.Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2025Article
- Trends and differences in the rates of autopsy in the United States, 2003 to 2020: A nationwide analysis.Heart rhythm O2 · 2025Article
- Autopsy characteristics of deaths due to pulmonary thromboembolism in northern and western denmark: a 10-year retrospective study.Forensic science, medicine, and pathology · 2025Article
- Hydrophilic Polymer Embolization-A Scoping Review of the Available Literature with Focus on Organ Involvement and Outcomes.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- Inpatient autopsy rate and associated factors in a Chinese megacity: a population-based retrospective cohort study.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Review
- Incidence and characteristics of prehospital fatalities from haemorrhage in Sweden: a nationwide observational study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Observational
- Postmortem metabolomics as a high-throughput cause-of-death screening tool for human death investigations.iScience · 2024Article
- Videoautopsy-A Minimally Invasive Autopsy Method Using Endoscopic Techniques in Forensic Medicine: Clinical Features.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Marital status and cause-specific mortality: A population-based prospective cohort study in southern Sweden.Preventive medicine reports · 2024Article
- Trends in mortality from non-natural causes in children and adolescents (0-19 years) in Europe from 2000 to 2018.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Daylight saving time affects European mortality patterns.Nature communications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThe consequences of a low autopsy rate are not considered in determining the cause of death.
methodWe have analyzed the Cause of Death Register of the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare since it started 1969 to and including 2016 to visualize the decline in the frequency of clinical autopsies over time and evaluated the effect on the quality of the cause of death diagnoses.
resultsOver the five decades studied, the frequency of clinical autopsies declined from almost 40% to less than 5%. The rate of decline was not even. Political decisions and changes of healthcare organization in Sweden affected the slope of decline of autopsies superimposed on a linear decline over time reflecting changes in clinical routines. A request of clinical autopsies was highly dependent on the level of care at the time of death, with the lowest number of requests for persons who died in nursing homes. The age at the time of death was a major factor affecting the number of autopsies, resulting in an autopsy rate of less than 1% in the ages where most persons die. Although men were autopsied more often than women, a gender-specific difference was not seen after correction for the age of death. We also found a higher rate of unspecific and irrelevant diagnosis in the cases not autopsied and we know from earlier studies by us and other authors that the cause of death diagnoses were missed in between 30% and 50% of the cases not autopsied.
conclusionThe decline in the clinical autopsy rate reduced the value of the death certificate register. An increase in the number of autopsies performed will improve the understanding of disease and cause of death, as well as to better inform next of kin.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.