A Modified Cosmetic Technique for Head and Neck Dissection in Autopsy Especially for Bald-headed Deceased

Abstract

The autopsy is a specialized procedure in which a pathologist performs a thorough external and internal examination including dissection of the organs from different body cavities such as cranial, thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic. In such dissection of an intact dead body, disfiguration and destruction are likely. When viewed during a funeral service, the currently practiced conventional autopsy dissection techniques can result in minimal tell-tale autopsy marks on the body of the deceased, in exposed areas of the head and neck even when the other areas of the body are covered with clothing. We propose a modification to the conventional skin incision over the head and neck in a way that the incision is placed over the back of the head and neck compared to the conventional incision over the sides of the head and sides of the neck. In this way, the incisions and their stitch marks are hidden, making them cosmetically sound. Although the exposure gained through the proposed method is similar to the conventional method additional incisions over the back of the neck with the additional turning of the body from supine to prone can increase the time duration of the autopsy compared to the conventional method. Moreover, in this method, the incisions are invisible even in a bold-headed deceased as the head incision is placed over the back.