I’m specifically recalling a case where a local mom woke up to find her 10 year old son dead. Perfectly healthy and just died in his sleep. 6 months later it was determined he died of an aneurysm. Did they just not suspect foul play? Would the autopsy have happened quicker if they had? Does the autopsy itself take a long time or is it a paperwork/political thing?
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I’ve read a lot of the above answers and they are right. But there are a few other things to take into consideration too.
One thing to consider is what country you are in. There will be places in the world where getting an autopsy will take longer and the test results will take longer than other countries.
If there is suspicion of foul play at the start or soon after then that may make the autopsy “easier” as it can give some direction to look at and then confirm while excluding other issues.
When it is a case of found dead and was well when went to bed, there is very little direction to look what to look for beyond the initial exam (ie if nothing is found then what do you test for next? Infection? Poisons? Genetics stuff? Other metabolic stuff?). And they’ll probably be doing all of it
There is also the type of autopsy. An autopsy is any examination of a body by a pathologist. This can be as simple as an external examination of the body, all the way to a very extensive first examination of the body, additional imaging, testing of various tissues and fluids, molecular tests including dna.
I obviously wasn’t involved in the scenario you gave but I do know the kind of investigation that would happen in the uk (have a medical paediatric background).
If it is a previously well child and found dead in bed in the morning, chances are that the family would have tried to do something and called an ambulance. They may even has started cpr themselves. If that is the case, it’s likely that the ambulance crew carried it on and took to hospital. I know that when kids are involved, this is often done and the crew find it difficult to call it at the scene, unless resus has not been started or the child is clearly dead.
In this scenario an autopsy would always be done and it would be started quickly (likely started less than 48hrs after death).
Unsuccessfully resus will have an impact on the body and the pathologist will need to work out what bits they are seeing is a result of that resus and what is not.
In your scenario it would always be a forensic level autopsy. This is because there would be no idea of cause of death to start. This means that as well as other causes of sudden death, foul play/child abuse needs to be considered, and if the autopsy does show something suggestive it needs to be through a proper chain of evidence to be usable in court.
You’ve then got that you don’t have a much guidance on where to start looking. The initial exam might give hints and that would direct investigations and make it faster. If the examination doesn’t give a cause then tissues and fluid tests would need to be extensive. It might be a needle in a haystack kind of thing, or even a look for a specific straw of hay in a haystack.
I am at this point speculating but I would think a bleed on the brain(how a brain aneurysm would kill) would be found but then to work out why. Did he have an unknown aneurysm and it burst? Did he happen to have an aneurysm, something else caused his death and the bleed is a result of resus? Has something else happened to him that lead to the aneurysm rupturing (something caused a sudden increase or decrease in bp that caused the rupture)? And is there anything that says this should have been picked up before, and if yes, then why wasn’t it?
At the same time as all this is being done police and social work will be investigating. An autopsy is not interpreted in isolation in this case. It is just a horrible situation for all involved.
A sudden unexpected death investigation is potentially a very lengthy process.
I hope this has added more to explanation of the length it took at get an answer. It’s not just the initial autopsy examination, but also possibly undirected testing and non-medical investigations before an official cause of death is declared
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