COVID-19 Autopsies, Oklahoma, USA

By L. Barton, E. Duval, E. Stroberg, Subha Ghosh, S. Mukhopadhyay. American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2020

774 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Objectives To report the methods and findings of two complete autopsies of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) positive individuals who died in Oklahoma (United States) in March 2020. Methods Complete postmortem examinations were performed according to standard procedures in a negative-pressure autopsy suite/isolation room using personal protective equipment, including N95 masks, eye protection, and gowns. The diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was confirmed by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction testing on postmortem swabs. Results A 77-year-old obese man with a history of hypertension, splenectomy, and 6 days of fever and chills died while being transported for medical care. He tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on postmortem nasopharyngeal and lung parenchymal swabs. Autopsy revealed diffuse alveolar damage and chronic inflammation and edema in the bronchial mucosa. A 42-year-old obese man with a history of myotonic dystrophy developed abdominal pain followed by fever, shortness of breath, and cough. Postmortem nasopharyngeal swab was positive for SARS-CoV-2; lung parenchymal swabs were negative. Autopsy showed acute bronchopneumonia with evidence of aspiration. Neither autopsy revealed viral inclusions, mucus plugging in airways, eosinophils, or myocarditis. Conclusions SARS-CoV-2 testing can be performed at autopsy. Autopsy findings such as diffuse alveolar damage and airway inflammation reflect true virus-related pathology; other findings represent superimposed or unrelated processes.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5bd8bb03d6962c6593ce9e1afc26d25289a99829

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Citations in the corpus

• Pulmonary Arterial Thrombosis in COVID-19 With Fatal Outcome: Results From a Prospective, Single-Center, Clinicopathologic Case Series (2020, background): “Notably, pulmonary thrombosis and thromboembolisms have been reported from autopsies of patients with SARS-1 (29), but until now, not of patients with COVID-19 (15, 19).”
• Autopsy Findings and Venous Thromboembolism in Patients With COVID-19 (2020, background): “To our knowledge, only 3 case reports have been published about COVID-19 patients who have undergone complete autopsy (7, 8).”