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The role of angiography in the congruence of cardiovascular measurements between autopsy and postmortem imaging

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Abstract

Introduction

Postmortem CT angiography is the method of choice for the postmortem imaging investigations of the cardiovascular (CV) system. However, autopsy still remains the gold standard for CV measurement. Nevertheless, there are not any studies on CV measurements on the multi-phase postmortem angiography (MPMCTA) which includes comparisons with autopsy. Therefore, the aim of this study is to compare CV measurements between the native CT scan and the three phases of the MPMCTA to find out which of these modalities correlate the best with autopsy measurements.

Methods

For this study, we selected retrospectively 50 postmortem cases that underwent both MPMCTA and autopsy. A comparison was carried out between the CV measurements obtained with imaging (aorta; heart cavities and cardiac wall thicknesses; maximum cardiac diameter and cardiothoracic ratio) and at the autopsy (aorta; cardiac valves, ventricular thicknesses, and weight).

Results

Our results show that the dynamic phase displays an advantage for the measurement of the aortas. However, the MPMCTA is not accurate to measure the cardiac wall thicknesses. The measurements of the heart cavities show no correlation with the heart valves. The cardiothoracic ratio measured by the MPMCTA shows no correlation with the heart weight. Nevertheless, the maximum cardiac diameter exhibits a correlation with the latter on the venous and dynamic phase.

Conclusions

These results show that only few CV parameters measured with imaging correlate with measurement obtained at the autopsy. These results indicate that in order to better estimate values obtained at the autopsy, we need to define new reference values for the CV measurement on MPMCTA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Center of Legal Medicine Lausanne-Geneva, Chemin de la Vulliette 4, 1000, 25, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Renaud Troxler, Paul Vaucher, Katarzyna Michaud, Kewin Ducrot & Silke Grabherr

  2. University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila”, Bucharest, Romania

    Costin Minoiu

  3. School of Health Sciences Fribourg, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Rue des Cliniques 15, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Paul Vaucher

  4. Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Francesco Doenz

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  1. Renaud Troxler
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  2. Costin Minoiu
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  3. Paul Vaucher
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  4. Katarzyna Michaud
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  5. Francesco Doenz
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  6. Kewin Ducrot
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  7. Silke Grabherr
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Correspondence to Silke Grabherr.

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The following study was approved by the Cantonal Ethics Committees on research involving humans (CER-VD; No. 130/15).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Troxler, R., Minoiu, C., Vaucher, P. et al. The role of angiography in the congruence of cardiovascular measurements between autopsy and postmortem imaging. Int J Legal Med 132, 249–262 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-017-1652-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-017-1652-0

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