50 Times Autopsy Doctors Uncovered Disturbing Truths About A Person's Death

Not mine but a Doctor i used to work with. Back when he was in school, he would do his cadaver labs really late at night.(to many people during the day.) One time it was really late. Around 2am. He was listening to his lecture on his head phones and he saw the cadavers arm move/twitch. He thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Then he saw it again. Proceeded to run away in a panic.

He told a few of his classmates what happened but nobody believed him. Next day they had a group cadaver lab with the same cadaver. The arm twitched yet again. The professor did some digging and it turns out the patients pacemaker was still fully functional and occasionally fired, causing the arm twitch.

He was so relieved. He thought there was a zombie in there.

My friend had to do an autopsy on a baby. The dad claimed she died after rolling off a couch. My friend found that the kid was slammed against a hard surface multiple times. Dad eventually admitted he hit the baby against the wall after she wouldn’t stop crying.

My friend had to quit that job cause it was so taxing mentally.

Assisted with a post-mortem when I was a student. Female patient died in her 40s. Her medical history had extensive complaints of abdominal pains, one Dr even referred to her as a "hypochondriac" and others commented on apparent anxiety. Opened her abdomen and she had extensive scar tissue, she was absolutely massacred inside from endometriosis. She suffered for decades and never got referred for a laparoscopy.

She didn't have f*****g anxiety, she had a medical condition.

EDIT: a few clarifications. Patient cause of death was unrelated. I won't give any details because it may get too identifying. I am UK based and this was an NHS post mortem. Patient did not have diagnosed anxiety. Drs referred to her anxiety only in relation to her abdominal pain complaints, no other known history.

Thank you for sharing your stories with me and others. I will take the time to read every one.

My mom loves this story:

My aunt got accepted into nursing school, but had to get prerequisites done in the summer. She knew someone who pulled some strings, and she was put into a pre-med class that taught pretty much the same thing as one of her nursing classes. She was the only woman, and because she has always looked younger than she is (and she was only 20 to begin with), and she’s really pretty, all the pre-med students groaned and complained that she would keep hold the class back.

Anyway, time came for the cadaver lab. The decedent had been in a car accident. The lab director and professor kept telling them that they weren’t looking for a cause of death—it had already been determined—they were just looking at the anatomy.

My aunt was looking over the x-rays and asked, “what were the circumstances of the accident” (my grandpa was a fire fighter/paramedic, so she knew that was a huge thing). The professor is like “We’re not looking for the cause of death. We told you, it was trauma from a car accident.” My aunt responds, “There’s a small spot on his kidney right here on the x-ray”.

They went and checked the kidney, and sure enough, there was a tiny tumor in his kidney. Based on the size and placement, it was determined that the tumor would have caused excruciating pain similar to a kidney stone—based on that information and the nature of the car accident, they said the man either blacked out from the pain while driving, or had a sharp, sudden pain that caused him to lose control of the vehicle.

They had to change the death certificate to add that to the contributory causes.

And my aunt also set the curve for the class.

And, two years later, she passed the boards with the top score. While in labor. My cousin was literally born 3-4 hours after my aunt pretty much aced the boards.

***My mom just informed me she merely passed the boards. My mistake.

I’m glad the pre-med students didn’t hold her back.

I may be late to the party but I finally have a good story to tell!

In medical school, my group’s cadaver was an 80+ year old female who was EXTREMELY unfit. Morbidly obese with muscles half the size of any other cadavers. Her pectoral muscles were paper thin, to get some reference. We figured she was bedridden during her last few months, which would somewhat explain these findings.

When we started our neurology unit and began to dissect the infratemporal fossa, I discovered a small metal pellet under the skin behind her right ear. My tank mates and I went on to find dozens of these metal pellets strewn around her head’s anatomy, with some lodged into the cranium and others in the bones of her face.

We contacted her living relatives to get some clarification and they ended up revealing that when this lady and her brother were children (they said she was 8 years old) they were playing with an old decorative rifle that the family had mounted above the fireplace. Long story short, the brother accidentally discharged the rifle into the girl’s face :(

The aftermath was this lady was blind and wheelchair bound for the rest of her life, and the pellets weren’t all removed. It was an interested dissection with that information from then on, but a sobering moment in reminding our class that our cadavers are humans with their own struggles and rich lives. If you’re considering donating your body to science, please know that we don’t take the responsibility lightly and a million thanks aren’t enough.

I have more stories if anyone is curious!

Edit: I should add that her granddaughter made a point of saying this lady did not hold a grudge on her brother, and they lived full lives on happy terms :).

Training in the Medical Examiners office. Elderly woman found dead by herself in her home. There was nothing suspicious so I was given the case. Took out all the organs, dissected everything, completely unremarkable. I cut through the larynx as the last step before I could clean up and finish the case and boom, giant piece of chicken lodged in her windpipe. Died choking on dinner.

My wife is a pathologist assistant and during her schooling carried out the autopsy of a newborn that died minutes after birth. The mother was desperate for a child and had a history of multiple miscarriages at different terms. This was her first time making it full term and all prenatal checkups revealed no problems. The delivery was difficult, but successful, and baby was alive for a short time. Skip to autopsy. All signs point to baby being fully developed. Get to the abdominal cavity and the liver is lacerated and hemorrhage everywhere. During the difficult delivery the resident used too much force with the forceps to pull the baby out. The ruptured liver the caused the baby to bleed out internally.

Wife was enthusiastic about autopsy up to this point, now has no interest.

When my parents were in medical school they attended an autopsy of a patient who had died in a car accident

Autopsy revealed that apparently this guy had survived a chest shot in Vietnam years ago that the surgeons/medics left in rather than perform risky surgery, the accident had migrated the bullet to his heart and was ruled the cause of death.

Forensic pathologist here. Two come to mind:

-I had just moved back to my home state where family lives. Get a case with a man with a distinctive last name in the family tree. I put a text out to my mom to see if we were related, but before she texted back I pulled the sheet back and already knew; he looked like me. It was my great uncle.

-Get a case where it's a "house fire" death. On exam he's got multiple, textbook stab & incised wounds. I spend the next 30 minutes getting ~~gaslighted~~ quizzed by PD about "Are you *sure*?" because they thought this was a straightforward house fire. Un-fun fact: fires not an uncommon way for people to try to conceal a homicide.

I did the autopsy of both a robber and his victim. The robber shot the victim in the back when he tried to escape in a motorcycle, and the robber was shot by the police in the exact same situation.

What's interesting is that they both died by exactly the same lesion. Both of them had their 4th lumbar vertebra shattered and their aorta (main artery of the body) sectioned at the same level. I thought of it like an extreme example of instant karma.

My dad used to perform autopsies.

His best story was that they were brought a body that has no real indication of any issues. After examining the body, the only thing of note was that there was blood coming out of the guys r****m. They begin the autopsy and the guys organs are completely liquidified and the body cavity is filled with lead shot. It became apparent really quickly that someone had shoved a shotgun up his a*s and pulled the trigger.

This was in the 70’s and I still have to wonder what this guy did to p**s someone off enough to get a shotgun up his a*s.

Former homicide detective here. Suspicious death, 30-ish male found alone by cleaning staff in the back row of a sparsely attended sci-fi movie. Strange scratching wounds around/in mouth. Some petechiae in eyes and on cheeks, but no signs of strangulation. No obvious signs of chronic illness or disease. Presented as healthy, normal adult male. Found on his person was a wallet with normal contents, and a single cancelled movie ticket, indicating he went alone. Weird, spy movie s**t going on here.

Autopsy: a large amount of popcorn compacted in his esophagus. Like a half cup. Dude was apparently excited by the movie, stuffing popcorn in his mouth, and choked. The scratch marks around/in his mouth were self inflicted, trying to dig out popcorn (verified via fingernail scrapings, his was only DNA present). Loud movie, he was in the back, no one saw or heard him choke.

I’ve never eaten popcorn again.

I was an investigator for a state medical examiner for just over 2 years. Had a mom that had “drank herself to death” according to the husband after relapsing on Mother’s Day weekend. I just felt like something was off. Sent her for an autopsy. Had a ruptured liver where dude had essentially beat her till she internally bled to death.

Later, while out on bail, he stole a semi truck, crashed it in a pond, got out shooting at a deputy, and they killed him.. saved the tax payers a good chunk of money.

Working in the ER, young man comes in, one of four in a nasty auto accident. Speed+inexperience=car flipped, passengers ejected. One expired shortly after coming into the ER.
I transported the body down to the morgue. First time I had felt a human being with all their bones broken. Felt like trying to lift sheets full of rolling bowling balls.
Once in the morgue I commented how unscathed he looked; he really did.... some dirt, the ET tube, not much else. ME offered I could view the autopsy if interested.
I was interested.
The first thing they noted were the xrays of the fractures, basically all the major bones including multiple multiple rib fractures. When they opened the body the organs were described as near liquified.
It wasn’t until weeks later I got the whole story from the EMT who had been on scene. Seems the passenger had been 1/2 in 1/2 out the window while the car had been flipping. He was just days shy of 17. The driver was just days past 16, his parents had bought him a brand new car, he’d had it less than 72hrs. Driver lived, though with severe brain damage, front and rear passengers died, rear drivers side passenger survived with not too much permanent (physical) damage.
I have friends who’s kids are getting their drivers license. I never pass up a chance to drop that story on them. I’ve seen a lot of f’d up things in my healthcare career. That is one of the grand total of 3 that make me tear up, and it’s one from early on.

Not a doctor, but my family requested an autopsy of my grandfather so we could (hopefully) get some answers about how he died. Our family has a history of unusual medical conditions (shout-out to my ancestors who were MASSIVELY inbred until a hundred or so years ago), so we wanted to see what made him so sick leading up to his death.

We never got a clear answer, unfortunately, but we did get an AMAZING summary of their findings. In the autopsy report, they listed all of my grandfather’s body parts. Now, Papa was a large man. It stands to reason that his body parts would be a bit larger than the average guy.

The list of body parts went something along the lines of “heart - above average, liver - above average, brain - above average” all the way down to “testicles - average.”

I’ve never laughed harder at average-sized testicles.

I’m a veterinarian and sometimes I do necropsy (basically autopsy for animals) and one of the more notable case involved a prized Wagyu cow that died mysteriously. Wagyu cows are very expensive to rear and fetch a good price at the slaughterhouse.

After cutting her open, I found metal wires extending from her stomach into her heart. It’s what we call ‘hardware disease’. Apparently the cow decided that eating metal wires for constructing fences was a good idea.

Normally the farmhands are quite good at keeping these hazards away from the inquisitive bovines but I guess slip up do happen from time to time.

Masters in forensic pathology here. You'd be surprised to know the number of people that have life threatening issues that never went diagnosed and that they didn't die from. Seen an older guy who died of pneumonia in hospital. On autopsy the guy had both an elarged heart and a couple of medium sized aneurysms in the brain. Another guy in his ~70s apparently came into the ER and had chest pain then died shortly after. Dies of a heart attack but also had cancer.

In less natural circumstances though...saw a guy who had been shot in the head a couple of times. Three definite entries and a blown out skull but police only found one bullet. Couldn't find the other bullet in his head at all. Assumed the police missed it.

Went on as normal with the autopsy until we got to the chest cavity. The other bullet was just chilling beside his lung. Turns out it entered the skull, hit the inside, ricocheted down his neck and into the chest. That was pretty wild.

While in medical school: We had to observe an autopsy and could assist. One of the lectures was to observe for head trauma. You do this by hitting the skull with a hard object (scissor or the like). A hollow sound is normal but a "dull" sound indicates trauma.
One of the other students did this exam and found a "dull" sound. The coroner had not yet himself examined the person and was very surprised, as he had not been informed by the police of head trauma.

They then continued to examine the head and they found a gun shot wound through the skull. All of a sudden the person was a "crime scene" and they had to call the police again and leave the person as untouched as possible.

I believe it was later confirmed that the person had shot himself, but it could have been a m****r.

Edit: this blew up! Thanks for all the upvotes. As someone pointed out there must have been some information that was missed between the police and coroner. I myself was not present , but I do believe the story is true, as it is now a lecture in why you should always examine for skull trauma and not just assume something before knowing.


Also edit: there seem to be a lot of interest so I have added another story which is unfortunately true, but crazy.

I took forensic lectures so I saw quite a bit of crazy s**t, but the things that stick is an autopsy revealing a history of abuse, pain and violence.

A little more 'funny': a skeletton was found in the near mountains, it was very clear he died in an accident 20+ years ago, however he had to be identified via DNA. Turned out his dad was not his dad, but his uncle. Sparked a whole public family drama show, cause the family was well known in my area.

Sheep farmer, I have to know how to do a necropsy for when something dies to know if it's something that could spread. Had a ewe fall over dead after losing a ton of weight and after treating her for everything under the sun. She would gasp for air and struggled to breathe but antibiotics, steroids and anti-inflammatory d***s didn't touch it. She finally passed away and I cut her open to see what the hell happened fully expecting to see her lungs riddled with s**t.

Her heart was 5 times the normal size and hard as a river stone. My guess is she'd had that issue her whole life and it didn't k**l her until she was 2.