Background: Autopsies have been an essential element to healthcare professionals' training, as well as to research processes, education, and public health. In spite of the decline of clinical autopsy rate after the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals eliminated the minimum autopsy rate required for accrediting hospitals, in Colombia, South America, we have seen that this practice has been reinitiated and our institution has performed more than 200 autopsies per year. Objective: To describe the main causes of death among individuals to whom a clinical autopsy was practiced at a general hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. Methods: A descriptive study of autopsy reports during the period between January 2012 and June 2015 was conducted. Results: The study included 747 autopsies of which 58.2% were performed in males. The majority of deaths occurred among the 41 to 64 years (mean 32.53, SD 28.53) age group. The leading cause of death observed in young adults and middle-aged adults (18 to 64 years) was cardiac arrest (58.5%) associated with acute myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathies, or cardiovascular abnormalities, followed by respiratory conditions (42.6%) and cardiac sudden death as the second cause of death in young adults. Conclusions: Studies based on clinical autopsies allow precise knowledge on the main underlying causes of death in a population, as well as, enable ideas based on key data obtained to be used in the development of cardiovascular prevention strategies for the different age groups thus preventing fatal outcomes in young adults who are the active working, productive population in society.

Corticobasal degeneration (CBD) is a pathology of low incidence and prevalence worldwide; it is accompanied by symptoms such as dystonia, rigid akinetic syndrome (bradykinesia), gait disturbances, neurological deterioration associated with severe cortical subcortical atrophy, and progressive to moderate to severe neurocognitive deficits, especially in immediate verbal memory and dorsolateral or dysexecutive syndrome. We identified neurocognitive impairment and neuropsychiatric symptoms in a patient diagnosed with CBD. Participant was a 70-year-old female patient, single; she presented progressive memory loss of an immediate verbal nature. Initially, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, finding that she had no characteristic signs and symptoms of these pathologies. The patient presented conciliation insomnia, gait disturbances, and severe neurocognitive deficit, especially in executive functions, immediate verbal memory, and visuospatial functioning. It was found that the patient presented neurocognitive alterations of the executive type (frontal lobe) such as decision making, planning, inhibition and operative memory, correlated with a severe alteration in her basic, instrumental and advanced activities of daily life, with a high risk factor for developing dementia. It is necessary to diagnose in an assertive and timely manner in order to generate functional neurorehabilitation plans in people diagnosed with CBD, with the main objective of positively impacting quality of life, at the individual, family, and social level.

No abstract

No abstract