ANALYSIS OF PHYSICIAN ATTITUDES CONCERNING REQUESTS FOR AUTOPSY

To quantify the role of failure to request consent as a determinant of the autopsy rate, questionnaires asking whether an autopsy had been r equested and the reasons for that decision were distributed to primary physicians after each death in a consecutive series of 75 patient dea ths. Autopsies were requested in only 56% of cases. Common reasons to request an autopsy included unanswered medical questions (37%), medica l education (22%), research protocol participation (16%), or routine p olicy (14%). When autopsies were not requested, the most common reason was the belief that there were no outstanding medical questions (64%) . Follow-up interviews with 14 oncologists and hematologists revealed that 8 generally request autopsies (usually to contribute to medical e ducation or to discover unexpected findings) and 6 generally do not (u sually because no unexpected findings are anticipated). Attempts to in crease the current low autopsy rate should address the question of whe n and why physicians are willing to request this procedure.