Certification of Death: External Postmortem Examination

For the external postmortem examination, the physician has to fulfill a wide range of functions concerning different legal and social aspects. The legal bases for external postmortem examinations vary from country to country, and even between different counties of the same country. The confidential part of the death certificate, under the heading 'Cause of death', the course of the disease has to be documented within a causal chain. If the cause of death remains unclear in a case of unexpected death of a healthy person, this should be noted on the death certificate. Assessing the manner of death is an extremely important task not only from the judicial point of view (detection of homicides), but also in terms of the interests of the bereaved. This chapter provides a checklist for the external postmortem examination, and presents a discussion on the identification and examination of the corpse.