Post-mortem multislice ct implementation for routine added value to classic autopsy in selected cases: A starter-kit for a 350,000-inhabitants Swiss Canton population

Abstract

Abstract The design and the implementation steps to bring a routine post-mortem-CT project for selected cases in the Swiss Canton of Ticino will be presented. Special emphasis will be directed on the strategies chosen to adapt local pre-existing medical, forensic and police facilities to the multidisciplinary project. The project involves the Collaboration of the valuable transnational forensic team from Italy, the Cantonal Justice and Police Department, the Radiology Department of the regional Hospital of Lugano in the Southern part of the Canton Ticino, as well as a complicated orographic configuration of the Canton Ticino. All of these played a major role in the idea of the project, in it is implementation and in the different strategies chosen to exploit “what was already there”. The Director of the Regional Hospital of Lugano the Cantonal Hospital Organization (Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale EOC) and the Radiology Department of Lugano coordinated the first steps of the project and contacted the Legal Medicine Team from Italy and the Justice and Police Departments giving birth to the initial project. Available facilities had to be fully and conveniently exploited in order to obtain Cantonal approval. New communication and archiving systems had to be in part implemented for efficient interdisciplinary Collaboration. We describe a suggested “starter-kit” that could be exported possibly in other similar realities both in Switzerland and in other Countries.