GOOD AUTOPSY PRACTICE - a lecture series from Prof Sebastian Lucas

Prof Sebastian Lucas resumed his popular autopsy lectures during this academic year starting from August 10th 2023. Junior trainees (ST1/ST2) and senior trainees who are continuing autopsy training will find these teaching sessions really useful.

The sessions will be held on Thursday 2-3 pm in the Large Seminar Room at St Thomas’ Hospital, Department of Cellular Pathology, Level 2, North Wing.

Trainees can join these sessions remotely via link

Lecture Presentations - 2023-2024:

• 10th August 2023 - Introduction

Past Lecture Presentations - 2022-2023:

• How to examine a heart at autopsy

• How to examine the lungs at autopsy

• The upper abdominal ‘tubes’

• Mary Sheppard Pathology Criteria for diagnosis of cardiomyopathy

• Introduction - What is the point of autopsies in the 21st century?

• The law around autopsies, and coroners

• Alcohol-related diseases and deaths

• Autopsy histopathology

• Cardiac disease 1: what to do with large hearts

• Toxicology and ancillary tests

• Cardiac disease 2: ischaemic heart disease and its limits

• Diabetes - all types and outcomes - and obesity

• Maternal deaths

• HIV and the autopsy

• Covid-19 and the autopsy (delivered by Vivek Sekhawat)

• Sepsis syndromes

• Practical neuropathology (ie for the non-specialist)

• Trauma, drowning, hanging, and decomposed

• The mechanisms of death in hanging

• Sickle cell disease and sickle cell trait

• Quality control issues in autopsy practice

• Liver disease in autopsy practice

• Indicators of suspicion

• Autopsy cytopathology

• Autopsy reports, inquests, MCCD

• Peri-operative deaths

• PMCT and the future of the autopsy

Future sessions 2024:

• April  - 4, 11, 18

  May - 9, 23

  June - 6, 20

____________________________

Courses

• Birmingham Autopsy Pathology course

Online resources

• RCPath: Autopsy Guideline Series - essential reading for the CHAT

• RCPath: Pathology Portal

• Human Tissue Authority: Codes of Practice

• Cause of Death List

• The Virtual Autopsy

• Health and safety at necropsy, J L Burton: Journal of Clinical Pathology 2003:56:256-260

• Role of the Procurator Fiscal

Books

• Knight’s Forensic Pathology, by Pekka Saukko, Bernard Knight

• Post Mortem Technique Handbook, by Michael Sheaff, Deborah Hopster

• Atlas of Adult Autopsy: A Guide to Modern Practice, by Kim Suvarna

• Autopsy Pathology: A Manual and Atlas, by Finkbeiner, Ursell and Davis,

• The Hospital Autopsy, by Burton and Rutty