Vougiouklakis Theodore, Mitselou Antigony, Agnantis Niki J
Department of Forensic Pathology, Medical School, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.
Anticancer Res. 2006 May-Jun;26(3B):2463-6.
Although most fatal tumors are diagnosed well before a patient's death, occasionally forensic pathologists encounter cases in which the presence of a primary tumor of the central nervous system had not been suspected prior to death. A search for cases of sudden death due to intracranial tumors from a total of 1985 autopsies from the archives of the Department of Forensic Pathology, University of Ioannina, Greece, in the period 1998-2005, was undertaken. Two such cases in which a medico-legal autopsy had disclosed brain tumors were found. The first case was a 34-year-old man who had been found unconscious in bed, and died a few hours after hospitalization. His autopsy had revealed a 7-cm glioblastoma at the level of the third ventricle. The second case involved a 67-year-old man presenting with brain tumor, diagnosed 1.5 months previously. The patient had died after 16 hours of hospitalization. A 4-cm astrocytoma of the left temporal lobe had been found at autopsy. In both cases, the tumors may, directly or indirectly, have been the underlying cause of death. The importance of a thorough neuropathological examination in all cases of sudden death, in which no extracerebral cause had been found, is emphasized.
尽管大多数致命肿瘤在患者死亡前就已被诊断出来，但法医病理学家偶尔也会遇到一些病例，即在死亡前并未怀疑存在中枢神经系统原发性肿瘤。我们对希腊约阿尼纳大学法医病理学部1998年至2005年期间存档的1985例尸检中因颅内肿瘤导致猝死的病例进行了检索。发现了两例经法医尸检揭示脑肿瘤的此类病例。第一例是一名34岁男子，被发现昏迷在床上，住院数小时后死亡。尸检显示其第三脑室水平有一个7厘米的胶质母细胞瘤。第二例涉及一名67岁男子，1.5个月前被诊断为患有脑肿瘤。患者住院16小时后死亡。尸检发现左颞叶有一个4厘米的星形细胞瘤。在这两例中，肿瘤可能直接或间接地是死亡的根本原因。强调了在所有未发现脑外死因的猝死病例中进行全面神经病理学检查的重要性。
