Introduction:

Autopsy is a method that guarantees the most complete study of the patient and the disease, and provides useful information to save human lives.

Objective:

To show the main demographic and administrative data, the most frequent causes of death and the assessment to clinical diagnoses of deceased in a pediatric hospital.

Methods:

With the help of an Automated System for the Registration and Control of Pathological Anatomy (SARCAP, by its acronym in Spanish), the main demographic and administrative data in 994 pediatric clinical autopsies of 1 830 patients who died between 1990 and 2015 at "Juan Manuel Márquez" Pediatric Hospital were recorded.

Results:

The autopsies rate was 71.0 %, the male sex prevailed and the group of children under one year. The main causes of death were malignant encephalon tumors, and lymphoid leukemias with complications were the main direct and intermediate causes of death. The pre-and post-mortem diagnostic discrepancy in basic causes of death was of 19.1 %, and between direct cause of death and intermediate cause of death it was of 29.6 %. Infection, cancer and multiple organ damage constituted the most important disorder’s groups that influenced the basic cause of death and direct cause of death.

Conclusions:

Autopsy is useful to confirm diagnosis, evaluate the quality of medical work, better understand the causes of death in children, and the existence of a good communication among the physician and the pathologist. It is demonstrated one more time the usefulness of SARCAP, which allows to collect all the computerized data information and to analyze with precision the diagnostic discrepancies.

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