Histopathological Findings in Spleen on Autopsy—A Study of 100 Cases

ABSTRACT

Background: Autopsies are carried out to establish the identity, cause of death, time of death, and antemortem orpostmortem nature of death. These help in establishing the cause of death and ascertain the disease process which led to death. It provides the opportunity to discover new diseases, to evaluate toxic effects of drugs and therapies. The spleen is the site of direct and indirect toxicity, a target for some carcinogens, and also a site for metastatic neoplasia. Many systemic or generalized diseases have splenic involvement. Methods: The present study was conducted on 100 specimens of spleen on routine autopsies received in the department of pathology, Government Medical College, Patiala, Punjab to find out the frequency of various lesions in spleen on autopsy. All the histological sections were stained in H & E stain, mounted ,examined microscopically & findings were recorded and tabulated. Results: 80 of the 100 autopsies were males, while 20 were females. In 81 (81%) cases, the microscopic findings were congestion, hemorrhage in 8 cases(8%) ,7 cases (7%) had autolytic changes,1 case(1%) had necrosis, granulomatous pathology were seen in 2 cases (2%) and 1 case (1%) had leukemic infiltration. Conclusion: Despite recent advances in diagnostic technology, there is large number of cases of preventable diseases for which the autopsy has remained an important complementary tool for identifying.