Prevalence of Lung Lesions at Autopsy: A Histopathological Study at Tertiary Care Hospital

The lungs are more commonly involved in various inflammatory, neoplastic and other disease processes as well as also secondarily involved by all forms of terminal events due to cardiovascular causes. Gross pathologic examination of autopsy lungs provide information regarding the status of lung- collapsed or hyperinflated, presence of scarring, fibrosis, bullae, consolidation, nodules, infarction, secretions, edema, congestion, granuloma/abscess formation and also provides information regarding status of bronchi and pleura which may provide hint to the diagnosis. Aims And Objectives: To study the prevalence of lung diseases in medicolegal autopsies according to age groups, gender and morphological lung lesions which was confirmed by histopathological examination. 400 cases were received in autopsy sec Materials And Methods: tion, pathology department at a tertiary care centre from June 2021 to October 2022.The lungs were weighed, measured and grossly examined.4 mm to 5 mm thick tissue sections from representative area were taken, processed and stained by hematoxylin and eosin staining. All histological sections examined under microscopically and findings were noted. Total 400 cases were studied, out of them 17 had unrem Results: arkable pathology, while in 383 cases had significant microscopic findings. Most affected age group was 16-30 years followed by 31-45 years, 46-60 years >60 years and newborn to 15 years. Males were more affected than females. Congestion and edema was the most common finding seen in present study. Second most common finding was inflammatory lesion in which maximum number of cases were noted in pneumonia followed by interstitial inflammation and Granulomatous inflammation Conclusion: Facilities of histopathological examinations of the autopsied tissues are available only in small number of institutions which often leads to delay and damages to the autopsy tissue samples. Factors like inadequate sampling, improper fixation and failure to send representative sections leads to contradiction between autopsy finding and histopathological examination