2020 Volume 40 Issue 7 Pages 588-591
We conducted 220 postmortem computed tomography（CT）examinations in 2018 at Tokyo Women’s Medical University Medical Center East. The most common indication for postmortem CT was sudden death of unknown cause. Radiologists interpreted 64 out of the 220 imaging series. The cause of death was identifiable by postmortem CT in 11 cases with radiology reports and 40 without them. Although autopsy imaging was better than judicial dissection for detecting some fractures, intracranial pathologies, and aortic dissection, postmortem CT had low accuracy in diagnosing ischemic heart disease, which is the most common cause of death. Inquests were performed on 169 cases for which the cause of death could not be determined by postmortem CT.
