Undiagnosed fatal malignancy in adult autopsies: a 10-year retrospective study

Administrative Data Is Insufficient to Identify Near-Future Critical Illness: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study

Background

Prediction of future critical illness could render it practical to test interventions seeking to avoid or delay the coming event.

Objective

Identify adults having >33% probability of near-future critical illness.

Research Design

Retrospective cohort study, 2013-2015.

Subjects

Community-dwelling residents of Manitoba, Canada, aged 40-89 years.

Measures

The outcome was a near-future critical illness, defined as intensive care unit admission with invasive mechanical ventilation, or non-palliative death occurring 30-180 days after 1 April each year. By dividing the data into training and test cohorts, a Classification and Regression Tree analysis was used to identify subgroups with ≥33% probability of the outcome. We considered 72 predictors including sociodemographics, chronic conditions, frailty, and health care utilization. Sensitivity analysis used logistic regression methods.

Results

Approximately 0.38% of each yearly cohort experienced near-future critical illness. The optimal Tree identified 2,644 mutually exclusive subgroups. Socioeconomic status was the most influential variable, followed by nursing home residency and frailty; age was sixth. In the training data, the model performed well; 41 subgroups containing 493 subjects had ≥33% members who developed the outcome. However, in the test data, those subgroups contained 429 individuals, with 20 (4.7%) experiencing the outcome, which comprised 0.98% of all subjects with the outcome. While logistic regression showed less model overfitting, it likewise failed to achieve the stated objective.

Conclusions

High-fidelity prediction of near-future critical illness among community-dwelling adults was not successful using population-based administrative data. Additional research is needed to ascertain whether the inclusion of additional types of data can achieve this goal.

Undiagnosed Malignancy and Therapeutic Complications in Oncology Patients: A 10-Year Review of Autopsy Cases

CONTEXT.—

Despite technologic and medical advancements, autopsies are essential to uncover clinically unsuspected diagnoses, to advance our understanding of disease processes, and to help reduce medical errors.

OBJECTIVE.—

To investigate the percentage of malignancy clinically diagnosed and undiagnosed in a series of hospital autopsies. Secondarily, to explore the therapeutic complications directly contributing to death in cancer patients.

DESIGN.—

A 10-year retrospective study (2008-2018). All nonforensic autopsies performed at the University of Vermont Medical Center during this period were reviewed by 2 pathologists, and data, including antemortem diagnoses of malignancy, and autopsy findings, including therapeutic complications, were collected.

RESULTS.—

A total of 246 cases documented a diagnosis of malignancy. In 34.5% (85 of 246) of cases a tissue diagnosis of malignancy was first documented following postmortem examination. In 41.2% (35 of 85) of cases there was clinical antemortem suspicion of malignancy, whereas in 58.8% (50 of 85) clinically unsuspected malignancy was first diagnosed after postmortem examination. In 16.0% (8 of 50) of cases the undiagnosed malignancy was the primary cause of death. The overall rate of therapeutic complication related to the treatment of oncologic disease in patients that resulted in death was 21.7% (35 of 161).

CONCLUSIONS.—

Our study shows the percentage of clinically unsuspected malignancies revealed by postmortem examination to be 5% (50 of 1003) of all autopsy cases. In 16% (8 of 50) of cases, the cause of death was due to the clinically undiagnosed malignancy, and hence not an incidental finding. Despite advances in medical therapy in the management of oncologic disease, in up to 21.7% (35 of 161) of cases therapeutic complications directly contributed to death.

Discovered cancers at postmortem donor examination: A starting point for quality improvement of donor assessment

BACKGROUND

clinical and imaging investigations allow a detailed assessment of an organ donor, but a quota of cancer still elude detection. Complete autopsy of donors is even less frequently performed, due to economic issues and increasing availability of high-quality imaging. The aim of this study is to gather evidence from the literature on donor malignancy discovered at autopsy following organ donation and to discuss the utility and limitations of autopsy practice in the field of transplantation.

METHODS

A systematic search according to PRISMA guidelines was carried out in Pubmed and Embase databases until September 2020 to select articles with reporting of cancer discovered in a donor at postmortem examination. Cancer discover in not-transplant setting were excluded. A descriptive synthesis was provided.

RESULTS

Of 7388 articles after duplicates removal, 56 were included. Fifty-one studies reported on complete autopsy, while 5 dealt only with limited autopsy (prostate and central nervous system). The number of autopsies ranged between 1 and 246 with a total of 823 autopsies performed. The most frequent cancer discovered at autopsy was lymphoma (n = 13, 15%), followed by renal cell carcinoma (RCC) (n = 11, 13%), non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (n = 10, 11%), melanoma (n = 10, 11%), choriocarcinoma (n = 6, 7%) and glioblastoma (GBM) (n = 6, 7%).

CONCLUSIONS

Lymphoma and melanoma are still difficult-to-detect cancers both during donor investigation and at procurement, whilst prostate cancer and choriocarcinoma are almost always easily detected nowadays thank to blood markers and clinical examination. There have been improvements with time in pre-donation detection procedures which are now working well, particularly when complete imaging investigations are performed, given that detection rate of CT/MRI is high and accurate. Autopsy can play a role to help to establish the correct donor management pathways in case of cancer discover. Furthermore, it helps to better understand which cancers are still eluding detection and consequently to refine guidelines' assessment procedures.

Incidence of malignancy and survival in patients with idiopathic pleuritis

Background

The long-term outcome after non-diagnostic thoracoscopy (idiopathic pleuritis) has not been investigated in nationwide studies, and the survival has never been estimated. Therefore, we decided to investigate the three-year incidence of malignancy and survival of patients with idiopathic pleuritis.

Methods

Retrospective, register-based, nationwide study of patients undergoing diagnostic video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) thoracoscopy ≤30 days after thoracentesis, using The National Patient Registry and The Danish Cancer Registry. Idiopathic pleuritis was defined as; no diagnosis of malignancy within 31 days after VATS. Patients were followed for 36 months after VATS.

Results

In total, idiopathic pleuritis were identified in 547 out of 658 patients undergoing VATS (83%), and 29 (5%) were diagnosed with malignancy during the 3 years follow-up period after VATS. Of these, 93% were diagnosed with malignancy within the first year. Numbers-needed-to-follow-up for detecting one case of malignancy was 18 during the first year after VATS and 250 in the two subsequent years. Survival was independent on type of malignancy (MPM vs. other malignancies; P=0.13) and of time from VATS to diagnosis (≤31 days vs. 1-36 months; P=0.15). Median survival in the non-malignant group was 1,095 days.

Conclusions

Our study confirms a low incidence of malignancy in idiopathic pleuritis after VATS. Nearly all incident cases of malignancy were diagnosed within 12 months from VATS. No survival disadvantage was observed in patients with incident malignancy. Our data suggest that follow-up of idiopathic pleuritis could safely be limited to 1 year. The optimal follow-up strategy remains to be investigated.

Gastrointestinal causes of sudden unexpected death: A review

Gastrointestinal conditions are a less common cause of sudden unexpected death when compared to other conditions such as cardiovascular conditions, but they are equally important. Various congenital and acquired gastrointestinal conditions that have resulted in sudden unexpected death are discussed. The possible lethal mechanisms behind each condition, along with any associated risk factors or secondary diseases, have been described. Through this article, we aim to highlight the need for physicians to prevent death in such conditions by ensuring that subclinical cases are diagnosed correctly before it is too late and by providing timely and efficacious treatment to the patient concerned. In addition, this review would certainly benefit the forensic pathologist while dealing with cases of sudden unexpected death due to gastrointestinal causes. This article is a review of the major gastrointestinal causes of sudden unexpected death. In addition, related fatal cases encountered occasionally in forensic autopsy practice are also included. There are several unusual and rare causes of life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding that may lead to sudden unexpected death to cover all the entities in detail. Nevertheless, this article is a general guide to the topic of gastrointestinal causes of sudden unexpected death.