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Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections

Sudden unexpected death (SUD) is a fatal event that occurs in an apparently healthy subject in a way that such an abrupt outcome could have not been predicted. SUD—including sudden intrauterine unexplained death (SIUD), sudden neonatal unexpected death (SNUD), sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), su...

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Autores principales: Ottaviani, Giulia, Ramos, Simone G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10253121/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37296771
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13111919
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author Ottaviani, Giulia
Ramos, Simone G.
author_facet Ottaviani, Giulia
Ramos, Simone G.
author_sort Ottaviani, Giulia
collection PubMed
description Sudden unexpected death (SUD) is a fatal event that occurs in an apparently healthy subject in a way that such an abrupt outcome could have not been predicted. SUD—including sudden intrauterine unexplained death (SIUD), sudden neonatal unexpected death (SNUD), sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), sudden unexpected death of the young (SUDY), and sudden unexpected death in the adult (SUDA)—occurs as the first manifestation of an unknown underlying disease or within a few hours of the presentation of a disease. SUD is a major unsolved, shocking form of death that occurs frequently and can happen at any time without warning. For each case of SUD, a review of clinical history data and performance of a complete autopsy, particularly focused on the study of the cardiac conduction system, were carried out according to the necropsy protocol devised by the Lino Rossi Research Center, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Research cases collected and selected for this study were represented by 75 SUD victims that were subdivided into 15 SIUD, 15 SNUD, 15 SUDY, and 15 SUDA victims. After a routine autopsy and clinical history analysis, death remained unexplained, and hence a diagnosis of SUD was assigned to 75 subjects, which included 45 females (60%) and 30 (40%) males ranging in age from 27 gestational weeks to 76 years. Serial sections of the cardiac conduction system disclosed frequent congenital alterations of the cardiac conduction system in fetuses and infants. An age-related significant difference in distribution among the five age-related groups was detected for the following anomalies of the conduction system: central fibrous body (CFB) islands of conduction tissue, fetal dispersion, resorptive degeneration, Mahaim fiber, CFB cartilaginous meta-hyperplasia, His bundle septation, sino-atrial node (SAN) artery fibromuscular thickening, atrio-ventricular junction hypoplasia, intramural right bundle branch, and SAN hypoplasia. The results are useful for understanding the cause of death for all SUD cases that were unexpected and would have otherwise remained unexplained, so as to motivate medical examiners and pathologists to perform more in-depth studies.
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spelling pubmed-102531212023-06-10 Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections Ottaviani, Giulia Ramos, Simone G. Diagnostics (Basel) Article Sudden unexpected death (SUD) is a fatal event that occurs in an apparently healthy subject in a way that such an abrupt outcome could have not been predicted. SUD—including sudden intrauterine unexplained death (SIUD), sudden neonatal unexpected death (SNUD), sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), sudden unexpected death of the young (SUDY), and sudden unexpected death in the adult (SUDA)—occurs as the first manifestation of an unknown underlying disease or within a few hours of the presentation of a disease. SUD is a major unsolved, shocking form of death that occurs frequently and can happen at any time without warning. For each case of SUD, a review of clinical history data and performance of a complete autopsy, particularly focused on the study of the cardiac conduction system, were carried out according to the necropsy protocol devised by the Lino Rossi Research Center, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Research cases collected and selected for this study were represented by 75 SUD victims that were subdivided into 15 SIUD, 15 SNUD, 15 SUDY, and 15 SUDA victims. After a routine autopsy and clinical history analysis, death remained unexplained, and hence a diagnosis of SUD was assigned to 75 subjects, which included 45 females (60%) and 30 (40%) males ranging in age from 27 gestational weeks to 76 years. Serial sections of the cardiac conduction system disclosed frequent congenital alterations of the cardiac conduction system in fetuses and infants. An age-related significant difference in distribution among the five age-related groups was detected for the following anomalies of the conduction system: central fibrous body (CFB) islands of conduction tissue, fetal dispersion, resorptive degeneration, Mahaim fiber, CFB cartilaginous meta-hyperplasia, His bundle septation, sino-atrial node (SAN) artery fibromuscular thickening, atrio-ventricular junction hypoplasia, intramural right bundle branch, and SAN hypoplasia. The results are useful for understanding the cause of death for all SUD cases that were unexpected and would have otherwise remained unexplained, so as to motivate medical examiners and pathologists to perform more in-depth studies. MDPI 2023-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10253121/ /pubmed/37296771 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13111919 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ottaviani, Giulia
Ramos, Simone G.
Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections
title Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections
title_full Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections
title_fullStr Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections
title_full_unstemmed Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections
title_short Autopsy for Medical Diagnostics: Finding the Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death through Investigation of the Cardiac Conduction System by Serial Sections
title_sort autopsy for medical diagnostics: finding the cause of sudden unexpected death through investigation of the cardiac conduction system by serial sections
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10253121/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37296771
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13111919
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