Organ weight in 684 adult autopsies: new tables for a Caucasoid population

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Abstract

The weights of normal organs were retrospectively culled for the years 1987–1991 from 684 forensic autopsy cases. All the subjects were Caucasoid adults who died of external causes and showed no pathological changes. The weights of the following organs were available: the heart, the right and the left lung, the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the right and the left kidney and the thyroid gland. The external parameters used for statistical correlation were the age, the height, the body weight and the body mass index (BMI) of the deceased. The weight of all the organs was shown to correlate with at least one external parameter, with the exception of thyroids in females. Organ weights decreased with age except for the heart and the thyroid, and increased in relation to body height and/or BMI. Except for the heart, the organ weight showed a better statistical correlation with the body height than the BMI. These updated tables of organ weight were compared with the data collected in previous studies. Such tables have to be regularly updated by pathologists in order to keep organ weight as a good criterion to be used in post-mortem diagnosis.

Introduction

The organ weight is one of the criteria regularly used by the pathologist during an autopsy to detect what is pathological. Reference material on which normality is based must be defined in order to enable a relevant comparison. The standard anatomical tables of organ weights of Ludwig [1] and Sunderman and Borner [2] are frequently used in this context but are already old. Even if the human population only changes slowly, it would be more accurate to compare such autopsy findings as organ weight with recent collected data. The aim of our study was to update tables of organ weights, to formulate standard reference values and to provide a range of values, taking into account the variables of age, sex, body height and body mass index (BMI). The study did not include the weight of the brain and was limited to a French Caucasoid population.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

From 1987 to 1991, 684 forensic autopsies were performed at the Department of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. The weight and height of the body as well as the organ weights were collected from post-mortem records of 355 adult males and 329 adult females. All the subjects selected were Caucasoid who died of injury with short survival time (<1 h) and all those who showed any macroscopic evidence of disease or histological abnormalities were excluded. The weight and the height of the body were

Results

The external parameters considered were the age, the height, the body weight and the BMI of the deceased. The corresponding values are shown in Table 3. All these parameters fitted to a Gaussian distribution curve except for the age, which showed that the majority of the individuals in the sample were less than 50 years old.

The mean, the standard deviation and the range of the organ weight of the studied population are shown in Table 4.

The mean and the standard deviation of the organ weight

Discussion

Organ weight references are only valid over a limited period of time. Thus, values of organ weight obtained by autopsy should not be compared with outdated reference tables but with more recently collected statistical data. Indeed the use of incorrect tables may lead to a wrong judgement on the pathological or not-pathological features of the organ, especially in forensic cases in which histology is not always performed. This implies the necessity to establish updated reference tables from

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