Autopsy — A way to obtain closure or to place blame?

An interesting discussion of the pros and cons of having an autopsy performed on a deceased family member is found in Denise Grady, The Autopsy, a Search for Reassurance, NY Times, May 19, 2009.

The article discusses the personal story of the author who did not agree to have an autopsy performed on her sister.  She asserts that the reasons for the refusal was that (1) an autopsy would not reanimate her sister, (2) lack of confidence that the hospital in which she died would provide a thorough and competent autopsy, and (3) a distrust of the doctors who would perform the autopsy.

But, now that a year has passed since her sister’s death, she is questioning her decision and wonders what the autopsy may have revealed.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Unsettled feelings are not uncommon when there is uncertainty about a death, and autopsies apparently help some people resolve them, according to an article by doctors in the Netherlands who interviewed relatives of patients who had died. Many had the same concerns I did. Was something overlooked? Could they have done anything to prevent the death?

Writing in the journal Family Practice, the doctors said that some of the relatives were reassured by autopsy results, because they feared that they had failed to notice important symptoms and so had been partly responsible for the death. * * *

They also said relatives wanted to know if the patient had died of something hereditary that might affect others in the family. For some people, questions about cancers that run in the family are crucial.