According to Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP), a post-mortem examination is “the opening of a corpse by an expert in order to determine the reason for and cause of death or other circumstances related to the investigation of a crime.” The legal basis for such examinations continues to be the Regulation for the Performance of External Forensic Examination of Corpses (Vorschrift für die Vornahme der gerichtlichen Totenbeschau) of 1855 and the Code of Criminal Procedure (Section 128).
There are five different types of post-mortem examination, depending on the reason for the examination, who requests it and who carries it out:
Commissioned by: Attending physician
Performed by: Clinical pathologist
Applicable law: Section 25 of the Hospitals Act
Aim: To clarify the cause of death and to check the quality of the diagnosis and treatment.
Commissioned by: Health authorities (city council or, in Vienna, MA 15 - Health Department)
Performed by: Clinical pathologist or forensic medical specialist
Applicable law: Respective provincial law e.g. Vienna Death and Funeral Act
Aim: To clarify the cause of death and to check the quality of the diagnosis and treatment.
Commissioned by: Public prosecutor’s office
Performed by: Forensic medical expert
Applicable law: Section 128 of the Code of Criminal Procedure
Aim: To determine the cause of death and if it was caused by a third party.
Commissioned by: Relatives / next of kin
Performed by: Post-mortems may essentially be performed by any physician with a licence to practice medicine in Austria. Physicians commissioned to conduct a private post-mortem examination must report this immediately to the health authorities, providing details of the name of the deceased, as well as the time and place of the planned post-mortem.
Applicable law: Respective provincial law e.g. Vienna Death and Funeral Act
Aim: To determine the actual cause of death, e.g. to clarify any insurance issues.
Only possible if the deceased agreed to donate their body to an institute for anatomy at an Austrian medical university while still alive (e.g. in Vienna: Donating a body - Vienna Medical University).
Relatives or next of kin can object to a body being donated if this wish was not recorded by a notary.
Performed by: Anatomy, pathology or forensic medical specialist
Aim: To teach students and train physicians, as well as to conduct scientific research.
In the case of clinical autopsies and those ordered by the health authorities or the courts, the consent of the relatives is not required and therefore cannot be withheld.
Private or educational autopsies may only be performed on bodies that have been released for burial, i.e. after a death certificate has been issued.
According to the Death and Funeral Act, a report most be drawn up fo each post-mortem ordered by a public authority and must contain the following information:
- Identity of the autopsied body
- Findings
- Diagnosis of diseases
- Cause of death
Every post-mortem includes the following steps
- External inspection
- Inspection of clothed body
- Inspection of naked body
- Internal examination, opening and inspecting the
- head
- chest cavity
- abdominal cavity
- and the skeletal system
- Preservation of examination material