The Autopsy, a Fading Practice, Revealed Secrets of COVID-19

By MARION RENAULT Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic has helped revive the autopsy. When the virus first arrived in U.S. hospitals, doctors could only guess what was causing its strange constellation of symptoms: What could explain why patients were losing their sense of smell and taste, developing skin rashes, struggling to breathe and reporting memory loss on top of flu-like coughs and aches? At hospital morgues, which have been steadily losing prominence and funding over several decades, pathologists were busily dissecting the disease’s first victims — and finding some answers. “We were getting emails from clinicians, kind of desperate, asking, ‘What are you seeing?’” said NYU Langone’s Dr. Amy Rapkiewicz. ‘Autopsy,’ she pointed out, means to see for yourself. “That’s exactly what we had to do.” Early autopsies of deceased patients confirmed the coronavirus does not just cause respiratory disease, but can also attack other vital organs. They also led doctors to try blood thinners in some COVID-19 patients and reconsider how long others should be on ventilators. “You can’t treat what you don’t know about,” said Dr. Alex Williamson, a pathologist at Northwell Health in New York. “Many lives have been saved by looking closely at someone’s death.” Autopsies have informed medicine for centuries — most recently helping to reveal the extent of the opioid epidemic, improve cancer care and demystify ...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: AP News Coronavirus Source Type: news