Background:

the discrepancy indexes and the coincidence of the causes of death in clinical and morphological diagnosis are, in an indirect way, indicators of the quality of medical care.

Objective:

to describe the importance of the autopsy, as well as general aspects of the clinical-pathological correlation.

Methods:

a literature review in Spanish and English was carried out in PubMed, Hinari and SciELO databases from 2000 to 2019; 58 published documents were obtained, of which 27 were selected (10 original research articles, 12 reviews, 3 theses and 2 books).

Results:

autopsy allows the comparison of clinical and morphological findings; it is considered the final complement of the clinical investigation. As such, the autopsy is not simply a corrective measure of misdiagnosis with statistical purposes, but a monitoring of diagnosis procedures and techniques and knowledge refining.

Conclusions:

the systematic analysis of mistakes and successes is an inexhaustible source of possibilities to better treat every new patient.

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