Concordance between premortem and postmortem diagnosis in the autopsy: results of a 10-year study in a tertiary care center

We describe the concordance between clinical diagnoses and autopsy findings in a tertiary care center. Clinical autopsy is a useful tool for the evaluation of accuracy of the clinical diagnoses. However, autopsy rates have declined around the world recently. We randomly evaluated 500 of 2,211 autopsies performed in the department of pathology of a tertiary care hospital during a 10-year period. We computed the sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and concordance scores between premortem and postmortem diagnoses. The autopsy diagnoses were used as the "gold standard." Four-hundred twenty-two (84.4%) of the autopsies met inclusion criteria. Diseases of the respiratory tract were diagnosed in 44.1% (186) of all autopsy reports reviewed. The higher sensitivity for diagnosis was observed in congenital anomalies (87.5%), while the higher specificity was observed in diagnosis of complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium (98.98%). The higher concordance between premortem and postmortem diagnosis was observed with the diagnoses of neoplasms (kappa = 0.76), and for the group of complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium (kappa = 0.76). A clinical diagnosis successfully addressed the cause of death in 40% of the cases Low values for concordance between autopsy reports and clinical diagnoses were present in most of the autopsies reports reviewed. We encourage physicians to continue considering the autopsy as an important tool that extends our understanding of diseases.