Cardiac Devices Come In Handy for the Coroner Device memory can often supply time and cause of death, study shows

Cardiac implantable electronic devices may be useful even after death when used as autopsy tools, a small study showed. When forensics couldn't determine a clear time of death in a patient with such a device, interrogation of the device yielded a time stamp for death in 36.8%, Philipp Lacour, MD, of Charité - Medical University of Berlin, Germany, and colleagues found. Similarly, cause of death was found by traditional forensics in 66.0% of autopsies; device interrogation supplied the cause of 60.8% of the remainder, Lacour reported at the European Heart Rhythm Association's EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM meeting in Vienna. "In our study, the time or cause of death was unclear in about 30% of cases after autopsy alone. This dropped to around 10–20% using device interrogation. The two procedures provide complementary information and with the combination we can solve around 85% of all unclear deaths," Lacour suggested in a statement. Out of 5,000 autopsies performed at Lacour's institution from 2012 to 2017, there were 151 cardiac devices found and removed (including 107 pacemakers, 22 implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, 14 cardiac resynchronization therapy systems, and six implantable loop recorders). https://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/EUROPACE/66146?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-06-21&eun=g721819d0r&pos=0