ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the specific considerations that arise following peri- and postoperative deaths. It discusses that deaths related to cardiovascular, thoracic, gastrointestinal, endoscopic, hepatic and pancreatobiliary and orthopaedic surgery. Postoperative mortality rates are higher in those undergoing emergency rather than elective surgery, presumably because the clinical condition of patients requiring emergency surgery is poorer. Pathologists have been repeatedly criticised for the quality of the reports generated in perioperative and postoperative deaths. Photography is an invaluable tool in peri- and postoperative death autopsies and all mortuaries should have a digital camera available. The purpose of the autopsy will be to assist a medicolegal authority in determining the cause of death. The autopsy of patients who die during or after surgery remains a valuable procedure which will yield findings that were unsuspected in life. Patients typically die as a result of sepsis, multiple organ failure, cardiorespiratory disease or gastrointestinal haemorrhage.
