Maybe you were one of the 101.7 million people you saw at any time. House MDGenius Diagnostic Gregory House resonates with a throbbing throbbing at the door in the middle of the night. The man he gave just a clean health collapses and dies. House and his colleague Eric Foreman decided to do the autopsy themselves. The house, which wants to see the man’s heart, pushes Foreman as he plunges into the patient’s sternum. They peered in: blood seemed to be dripping from the wound. “That’s weird,” says Foreman, “Does he… look like he’s bleeding?” There’s a beat. Then the man’s eyes wide open and he screams.
If you missed this particular episode, you certainly saw something similar. The autopsy plays the lead role CSI, boneand many other prime time dramas on medicine and forensic medicine. They may be the most touched medical procedure that Americans have through their screens, but still the most misunderstood. The way these shows portray autopsies is so disastrously wrong, it doesn’t only discourage families from choosing these important procedures. They reduce the physician’s understanding of how an autopsy works.
On television, an autopsy takes place in a dark room with blue light. They include females and bone saws. The boring lab court technician discusses ligature marks and defensive wounds. The doctor frowns at something mysterious and intrusive. Many (but not all) pathologists doing autopsies are aggravated eccentrics. Non-professional doctors like home do what will cause them to lose their medical license. In one episode of Gray’s AnatomySandra Oh’s and Katherine Heigl characters perform an autopsy in direct violation of the orders of patients and their families. In the other, the autopsy pathologist mercilessly chews gum and reserves dinner during the amputation. In almost every episode CSIthe technician, who has no protective gear, stands in a lit room like a diving bar, feeding the machine with a sliver of human tissue, which spits out a neat list of every foreign object in the body.
Most Americans never see a real autopsy, so our impression of them is shaped by the depiction of television. That was the way for me. novel. In real life, autopsies are conducted in brightly lit rooms. (For example, if you cannot move your body safely, forensic autopsy should be completed on-site.) An autopsy begins with a Y-shaped incision into the sternum and works systematically through the body. Sometimes the organs are examined in situ, but more typically they are removed, washed away and dissected at the water surface. The assistants don’t just pick up, look at organs, make a diagnosis, or revert back. Rather, they catalog as many body pathologies as possible, whether they suspected of causing death or not. They also take care to ensure that evidence of this examination is not visible at open casket funerals. It’s a slow and comprehensive task that rarely involves flashy electronics.
Perhaps the most subtle, ridiculous aspect of a television autopsy is its lack of personal protective equipment. At actual autopsy, those involved wear head-to-toe PPE. Surgical scrubs, arm guards, booties, aprons, face masks, splash shields, caps, etc. – when you open the human body, all the blood, bile and other liquids are still there. Even if it is not pumped into the body, the wound can still escape from the wound. That author did House MD Episode Do you think that when the heart stops, the human body will exist spontaneously?
Such errors in television depictions reduce the autopsy to horrifying glasses if the procedure is actually a respectful and unique useful tool for understanding how a person lives and dies. Family members may refuse an autopsy for several reasons: cultural taboos, simple creaks, the sense that the deceased is suffering enough, the desire to quickly gain the body. However, death does not need to reach a threshold of doubt or mystery to be worthy of investigation. Many teaching hospitals where residents may observe autopsies to improve their understanding of anatomy will perform a free autopsy on patients when their families ask. Anyone can get it and more people should.
Even if death is expected, an autopsy can serve the true purpose of your livelihood. They help to present the perfect story of the disease. Sad family Move towards acceptance. An autopsy can catch inherited diseases that doctors tend to overlook. Signet ring cell carcinomaand may have revealed the cause of dementia Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. Even in suicides where the cause of death is usually clear, autopsy Identify the underlying problem It may have contributed to the deceased’s pain.
Despite how useful autopsies are, they have become endangered species. In one survey conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital in the mid-2000s, residents overwhelmingly said they had never before. I saw the autopsynot much was done. Also, doctors are not always comfortable talking to patients’ families. Autopsy rates above half From 1972 to 2007, it fell sharply to just 8.3%.. In many other countriesthe rate will be even lower.
Not all hospitals offer autopsy services. Many people ask the family members of deceased patients if they want an autopsy. Falling to residentsmany of which lack training to properly explain and clarify the process. At that moment, it rarely stops a grieving family from calling out all the stupid images they think they’ve seen on TV. For example, consider an episode from 2020 Good doctor It is literally called an “autonomy.” Sean Murphy is operating Jane Doe, who is not an ER patient, when the carotid artery is “blown away” and she is bleeding in seconds. Over the next 40 minutes of screen time, the following happens:
The hospital refuses Murphy’s permission to perform an autopsy. (Apparently, the arteries explode every day.) He follows the woman’s estranged son. Nevertheless, the head of pathology (he just broke up with Murphy) allows him to take the procedure. He does his autopsy himself in a dark room and does not wear PPE beyond the cute little apron, but the pathologist stands duul behind him. He runs through a woman’s liver, shows it temporarily, then put it back in and out without sewing it or taking a tissue sample. Finally, he shows up at his son’s house and says that his mother has the hereditary Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and that his son needs to be treated. Everything is allowed.
This is the episode that I argue for Autopsy. The only remote real thing about this episode is that my son doesn’t like to agree. And after seeing that horrible movement, what about you?
In these shows, the harsh truth of the corpse is either milked or smoothed out with a hologram due to the impact coefficient. Each chemical in the human body can be machine-identified, and each story has a satisfying ending. Everyone knows that life isn’t like that. We need to accept that death is not.
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