Medical Legal Problems of Postmortem Examinations

Overview

Medical institutions frequently encounter the requirements of the survivors - grieving relatives - that thedeceased person not to be examined postmortem especially in view of reverence of the body. The first author -physician with a legal education - presents an attempt to elucidate cases, when these requirements are to be metand those, where postmortem examination should be amust. The Czech law differentiates two kinds of postmortemexaminations - medical postmortem and the judicial postmortem, respectively. The medical postmortem isa compulsory examination or that based of a decision of the examining physician. The judicial postmortem isordered by criminal case legal authorities in case the person is suspected to have died due to criminal causes.

Key words:
medical postmortem, judicial postmortem, medical institution, requirements of grieving relatives