How real-life 'silent witnesses' save lives
27/Jan/2010
The actors on Silent Witness may be performing autopsies one after the other but real-life pathologists seem to be suffering from a dearth of bodies.
In this week's Scrubbing Up, top pathologist Professor Sebastian Lucas says his profession has to get the message across more clearly that autopsies can save lives.
This is a plea to restore a bedrock of medical practice, education and research - the regular consented autopsy examination of dying patients, done by pathologists in hospitals.
Until the 1960s, it was
standard practice for a large proportion of all people who died in
hospitals to be autopsied, to find out more about their diseases, teach
staff and students, and disseminate the knowledge into better clinical
practice.
Source and full story: BBC News