A decided irony with hospital autopsies is that, as they become ever more prevalent on television medical and crime-related dramas, they are much less frequently performed in real life.

And that is not a good thing, say medical researchers who cite the important role that autopsies play in helping to understand the onset and progress of a disease, as well as the efficacy of certain treatments that were administered in attempts to stem or cure it.

Further still, autopsies often reveal the misdiagnosis of a medical condition. Elizabeth Burton, the deputy director of autopsy services at Johns Hopkins Hospital, notes that she once performed an autopsy on a man for whom cirrhosis of the liver was listed as the cause of death. He actually died of cancer.

In past decades, autopsies were routinely performed at hospitals across the country. In the 1960s, they were carried out on about half of all patients who died in-house. At one time, hospitals had to perform autopsies on at least 20 percent of their patients to remain accredited.

That requirement no longer exists, and the rate of autopsies has dwindled to about five percent.

The reasons cited are many. Funding is an issue; doctors fear litigation from findings that they misdiagnosed or committed some other form of malpractice; and new and more advanced technologies have arisen as powerful diagnostic tools.

Burton says, though, that an autopsy remains an invaluable tool that sometimes reveals conditions that high-tech imaging misses or interprets incorrectly. Additionally, she says that autopsies are helpful in revealing conditions -- such as heart disease and cancer -- that have hereditary implications.

Related Resource: Gant Daily, "Decline in Autopsies May Obscure Understanding of Disease" May 17, 2011